1916 (26 page)

Nathan and Dillon were on amicable terms, Nathan often visiting Dillon’s Dublin home, and both men were concerned to preserve good order in Ireland. Dillon’s objectives were to prevent the imposition of conscription during the war and to secure the enforcement of the home rule Act at the end of the war. The Dillon papers reveal that Nathan and Dillon conferred in some detail about the advanced nationalist press. A letter from Nathan to Dillon in November 1915, in which Nathan enclosed some current newspapers, provides a precise picture of the workings of that press.
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Nathan declared: ‘Here are all the Sinn Féin papers except one called the
Spark
, of which I have not been able to obtain a copy today. I also send you a statement shewing [sic] the approximate weekly circulation of these publications as it stood in the early part of last September.’ Nathan concluded by observing, somewhat wryly, that ‘I do not envy your Sunday’s reading.’
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The approximate circulation of each paper in every county of Ireland was recorded and the total for the area under the control of the RIC was then added to the total under the control of the DMP to give the following results as the weekly circulation of each individual paper for the week ending 7 September 1915:
Irish Volunteer
, 3,746;
Nationality
, 3,860;
Hibernian
, 2,512;
Spark
, 1,618;
Worker’s Republic
, 838. Further detail was provided of the publication of papers in Belfast.

These papers provided the same diverse type of propaganda as the four journals that had been suppressed in December 1914. While the
Irish Volunteer
presented a unique type of propaganda, combining both an expression of the ideals of Irish nationalism and military plans for the eventuality of action, the other journals sent by Nathan to Dillon publicised their own distinct vision for Ireland’s future. For example, the voice of the Labour party and the Irish Citizen Army, lost with the suppression of the
Irish Worker
, secured representation again on 29 May 1915 with the publication of the
Workers’ Republic
.
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It was edited by James Connolly and published at Liberty Hall. A striking leader by Connolly on 5 February 1916 encapsulated his thinking in the months before the Rising. He wrote that:

recently we have been pondering over the ties that bind this country to England. It is not a new theme for our thoughts; for long years we have carried on propaganda in Ireland, pointing out how the strings of self-interest bound the capitalist and landlord classes to the Empire.

These ties, Connolly lamented, had corrupted all classes of Irish life like ‘a foul disease’ and he felt that the degradation was so humiliating that ‘no
agency less potent than the red tide of war on Irish soil will ever be able to enable the Irish race to recover its self-respect.’
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The advanced nationalist press, therefore, retained a socialist as well as a separatist republican dimension.

The socialist and the separatist press were united in their continued efforts to oppose recruiting. The
Irish Volunteer
of 22 May 1915, for example, contained an article by Pearse entitled: ‘Why we want recruits’. He wanted them for the Irish Volunteers! The very title was a direct challenge to British recruiting policy and struck at the heart of British propaganda. Pearse concluded the article thus:

we want recruits because we have absolutely determined to take action the moment action becomes a duty … We do not anticipate such a moment in the very near future; but we live at a time when it may come swiftly and terribly. What if conscription be forced upon Ireland? What if a unionist or coalition British ministry repudiated the Home Rule Act? What if it be determined to dismember Ireland? What if it be attempted to disarm Ireland? The future is big with these and other possibilities. And these are among the reasons why we want recruits.

Pearse’s observation on the possible actions of the coalition ministry in England, formed only a few days earlier, on 19 May, was not only significant but also politically astute.
⁶⁰

Reflecting on these events Pearse discerned that a unique phase of Irish history was being acted out by all participants. On 1 June 1915, in a preface to the series of his articles that had appeared earlier in
Irish Freedom
between June 1913 and January 1914, he wrote of that time as ‘a period which, when things assume their proper perspective, will probably be regarded as the most important in recent Irish history’.
⁶¹
He ended
his brief preface to the book with the observation that ‘the rest is history’, without any apparent awareness that ‘the most important’ phase of Irish history was yet to come.

In fact, shortly having written these words, Pearse had a leading role in the greatest demonstration of advanced nationalism in Ireland for many years. The public funeral of O’Donovan Rossa, which took place on 1 August 1915, not only provided a platform for Pearse and the Irish Volunteer movement but also served as a dramatic exercise in propaganda. This did not happen by chance: it was carefully stage-managed. Significantly, the first sub-committee to be listed in the funeral arrangements
was the publicity sub-committee. Among its members were Arthur Griffith, Éamonn Ceannt, Seán T. O’Kelly, J.J. O’Kelly (Sceilg) and Brian O’Higgins (Brian na Banban). The souvenir brochure, which itself had a propaganda purpose, was printed by Patrick Mahon, whose printing works had been demolished under the terms of DORA in December 1914.
⁶²

The names of all the leading figures who were to participate in the Easter Rising are to be found among the names of those who made up the thirteen sub-committees that managed the funeral arrangements, including some eighteen members of Cumann na mBan. The military ranks of the Volunteers were united with the ranks of the Irish Citizen Army, resembling a trial run for the Rising. In the listing of the guards for the procession, the ranks of the participating officers were given. For example, Commandant General Thomas MacDonagh, was designated the chief marshal, while Commandant James Connolly of the Citizen Army and Captain Pádraig O’Riain of Fianna Éireann were also listed. Beside the name of Seán MacDermott was written: ‘in Mountjoy prison under the Defence of the Realm Act’. In apparent defiance of the authorities, there was no attempt to conceal the names of the participants.
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James Connolly and Arthur Griffith joined with Pearse in paying written tributes to O’Donovan Rossa. The words of Pearse at Rossa’s graveside are well-known. Less adverted to is the reference to DORA that preceded his valediction. ‘The defenders of this realm,’ Pearse declared, ‘have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools! They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.’
⁶⁴

Pearse, and others, not only provided ideological and emotional support for the course that had been taken, but also, in his capacity as director of organisation, provided detailed plans of military organisation. Other military articles were provided by J.J. O’Connell, chief of inspection, and Eimar Duffy.
⁶⁵
Giving evidence before the royal commission in 1916, Colonel Edgeworth-Johnstone, chief commissioner of the DMP, testified to the worth of these articles, showing clearly that he had read them, and stating
that ‘very clear and very good military articles were written every week in the
Irish Volunteer
, giving instruction as to hedge fighting, taking trenches, and all that sort of thing’.
⁶⁶
Taken in conjunction with Pearse’s earlier recommendation, in
Irish Freedom
of December 1913, that the Volunteers should be trained in the ‘readiness and ability to shoot’ and his private correspondence with Joe McGarrity, the evidence indicates that the Volunteers were not merely indulging in the gesture of a blood-sacrifice.
⁶⁷

While the military organisation and the morale of the Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were being built up, criticism of the war continued. Moved, however, by the huge number of Irish deaths on the western front and at Gallipoli, there was a marked change of attitude by the advanced nationalist press towards fellow Irishmen who had joined the ranks of the British forces. The cursing of recruits to the British forces gave way, as Novick remarked in James Connolly’s case, to ‘guarded respect and pity’.
⁶⁸
This change was expressed most succinctly and sincerely by Eoin MacNeill in the
Irish Volunteer
of February 1916. ‘Let me say plainly,’ he wrote, ‘that if any Irishman is convinced that he will serve Ireland by becoming a British soldier, and if he acts on that conviction, he is a patriotic and brave man.’
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The criticism that was made of the war still focussed on British war aims but a new dimension was added to the criticism: the British claims of atrocities by the Germans against the people of Belgium. As in the period prior to the war, Roger Casement was the most perceptive critic of British actions. Writing in the
Continental Times
, a self-styled ‘cosmopolitan newspaper published for Americans in Europe’, of 3 November 1915 and subsequently in the
Gaelic American
, Casement exposed the weaknesses in the Bryce report into German atrocities that had been published in late May 1915. Casement, who had spent some time in Belgium after the war had started, pointed out that Bryce had conducted his commission of inquiry in England and had relied, in the main, on the evidence of British soldiers. He rejected Bryce’s findings as an exercise in propaganda. While admitting that Germany had committed wrongs in Belgium, he concluded that:

it is not German barbarity which distinguishes this war from all others that preceded it. It is not the colossal numbers of men engaged; the vast holocausts of slain … it is that, above all other contests between nations and men, this war has revealed the baleful power of the Lie. That has been the chief weapon, the chief power displayed by the foremost of the belligerents.
⁷⁰

Casement also noted that within two months his majesty’s stationery office had circulated 1,000,000 copies of the Bryce report throughout the world.
⁷¹
This propaganda campaign was conducted from Wellington house, London, which became the centre of British propaganda at the start of the war. The head of the centre was Charles Masterman, who operated in unison with the news department of the Foreign Office. Sir Gilbert Parker was appointed to head the section responsible for America and Sir William Wiseman, as intelligence officer, was sent to New York as director of the British Library of Information.
⁷²
The structure and scope of the propaganda operation was so vast that the million copies of the Bryce report, as noted by Casement, were but a drop in the ocean of propaganda publications that flooded America and Europe.

The weekly
Gaelic American
, the circulation of which had been banned in Ireland in December 1914, continued to promote the writings of Casement about the war. The editor, John Devoy, was one of the three man
Clan na Gael
executive involved in planning the Rising in Ireland, and the journal reflected his well known militancy; a list of ‘contributions to arm men of Ireland’ was, for example, a regular feature of the paper. Advertisements were carried for Casement’s book
The Crime Against Ireland
, and articles appeared in the autumn of 1915 defending the ideals of Casement and the Irish brigade, accompanied by photographs of members of the brigade.
⁷³
In the issue of 27 November 1915 Casement wrote a detailed critique of Sir Edward Grey’s foreign policy. In particular he described the process of ‘secret armed conventions’, ‘secret military compacts’, and ‘conversations of naval and military experts’, which, Casement claimed, were pledging England ‘to the certainty of war’ with Germany.

Another journal to publish a unique criticism of British war policy, and of Redmond’s participation in it, was the
Catholic Bulletin
. Under the editorship of J.J. O’Kelly (Sceilg), it had evolved from a monthly journal of mainly Catholic interest into a paper of largely political comment. Founded in 1911, the transformation took place almost immediately with the beginning of the home rule debate. It regularly gave prominence to the statements of Bishop O’Dwyer of Limerick against Redmond’s policy and, in particular, it contrasted Redmond’s appeals for support for the war with those of Pope Benedict XV calling for peace. The issue of September 1915 listed all of the pope’s appeals for peace and the October issue blamed Redmond for ignoring them. The close association of the
Catholic Bulletin
with its correspondents in Rome, Monsignor Michael O’Riordain and Father John Hagan of the Irish College, ensured that it was extremely well
informed on papal affairs.
⁷⁴
These two men were not only shaping opinion with their written articles but also they were shaping policy by their access to the pope and other cardinals. For example, in January 1916, Monsignor O’Riordain privately informed Bishop O’Dwyer that he had translated an article that the bishop had written attacking the Bryce report into Italian and had made the pope aware of its contents. In March 1916 the
Bulletin
contrasted Redmond’s call to Irishmen to respond to the Bryce report into German atrocities with Bishop O’Dwyer’s opinion that the report was ‘a fraud
upon simple people’.
⁷⁵
Both men were also aware of Count Plunkett’s private audience with the pope during his visit to Rome, 8–21 April 1916, in which the blessing of Pope Benedict XV was conferred on the Volunteers. Plunkett conveyed this news to members of the IRB who had constituted themselves as the Provisional Government of Ireland shortly before the Rising.
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