1916 (24 page)

The debate was conducted in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. On 25 November Walter Long, former chief secretary
and former head of the Ulster Unionist Council, asked Birrell, ‘what steps he proposed to take in order to render a repetition of this treasonable practice impossible’.
¹⁵
Birrell’s reply did not please everyone. He stated that he, personally, did not regard the newspapers ‘as a danger’. The following exchange then took place:

Birrell’s benign opinion of the threat posed to recruiting by the advanced nationalist press was clearly not in accord with those of his colleagues. Following the debate it was resolved, on the advice of Lord Robert Cecil, to use the Defence of the Realm Act against the papers.
¹⁷
The papers suppressed under the powers of DORA on 2–3 December 1914 were
Sinn Féin
,
Irish Freedom
,
Ireland
and the
Irish Worker
. At the same time the circulation of the American weeklies, the
Gaelic American
and the
Irish World
, was prohibited in Ireland. The precedent of using DORA against the press had been established and was to be used again in the years ahead.
¹⁸

A
DVANCED NATIONALIST PROPAGANDA

From the British point of view the pages of these banned journals were seen primarily as a threat to recruiting. They questioned the validity of speeches in favour of recruitment, made by leading figures such as John Redmond and Tom Kettle, and they rejected the values that inspired the nationwide poster campaign urging Irishmen to fight at the front. This campaign, which was, in origin, centrally controlled from England, evolved into a Dublin-based Department of Recruiting, which was created in October 1915 under the direction of Lord Wimborne. It was supported by the leading Irish newspapers and by the
National Volunteer
, an Irish party journal.
¹⁹

From the Irish point of view these journals offered a distinctive critique of the current political debate. For example,
Irish Freedom
, the journal associated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), made its own particular views on home rule clear in April 1912, when it declared that: ‘Nationalists of Ireland stand for the complete independence of Ireland, and they stand for nothing less. In the English empire they have no lot or part.’ This rejection of John Redmond’s policy on home rule was matched by a critical analysis of England’s policy in regard to Germany, an analysis, significantly, that had been framed well before the war began. For example, in its issue of January 1913, having assessed the relative strengths of the English navy and that of Germany and her allies combined, the journal concluded that ‘war between England and Germany is practically inevitable and its issue is uncertain.’ This remarkably early perception of a coming world conflict gathered further impetus in August 1913 when an article by Roger Casement on ‘Ireland, Germany and the next war’ (originally published in the
Irish Review
, the journal associated with Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett and Pádraig Pearse) was re-published in
Irish Freedom
. The voice and views of Casement against British world policy, based on his personal awareness of the workings of the British Foreign Office, provided the informed inspiration for much of the criticism of the war. ‘It is evident,’ Casement argued, ‘that, Great Britain once defeated, Germany would carry the Irish question to a European solution in harmony with her maritime interests … nothing advanced on behalf of England could meet the case for a free Ireland as stated by Germany.’
²⁰

The views of Casement on the war had also featured prominently in the
Irish Volunteer
. The very first issue of the journal, on 7 February 1914, contained an essay by him entitled ‘From Clontarf to Berlin’, which called for an expression of Irishness that was distinct from British imperial interests.
²¹
In another article on 28 February 1914, written before the Curragh mutiny, Casement called upon the Irish Volunteers to mobilise: ‘Let all the recruiting in Ireland be for the Irish Volunteers alone,’ he declared. He was also critical of ‘John Bull’ (Seán Buidhe), whom he called ‘a coward and a bully’.
²²

At that time the Irish Volunteers spoke with one voice, with Casement and Tom Kettle sharing a Volunteer recruiting platform at Tullamore in April 1914.
²³
Both men stressed the Volunteer ideal of religious toleration, Casement maintaining that they ‘did not stand for any sect or sectional interest’, Kettle speaking of the harmony of ‘all creeds and classes’. That harmony among the ranks of the Volunteers was shattered by the outbreak of war and was effectively symbolised by the parting of the ways of Casement and Kettle.

Immediately war was declared, the issue of
Irish Freedom
for September 1914 had the banner headline ‘Germany is not Ireland’s Enemy’,
and the front page of notes had further extracts from Casement’s essays in the
Irish Review
on the dangers of war. The editorial was uncompromising in its condemnation of the war. It asserted that ‘Britain’s interests and Ireland’s interests never have been identical. They are not so now. The union of the shark with its prey is the only bond between us.’ Shortly afterwards, on 19 September, the
Gaelic American
, John Devoy’s American-based weekly, gave front page prominence to an article, dated 5 September, by Casement, who was in New York prior to his departure to Germany. The headline declared: ‘Germany to win must cripple or destroy England’. The article examined how Germany might best win the war and it proposed that the most effective way of weakening England was to strike a blow through Ireland. There, Casement suggested, you assail ‘the inviolable sanctuary of your chief enemy. You impair his prestige. You assail his self-confidence. You injure his self-esteem. You bring fear to his heart. You shake his empire.’ A further letter of Casement’s, dated 16 September, appeared in the
Irish Independent
on 5 October. It made the point that statistically Ireland was already contributing more troops to the war than England, even without counting the number of Irish who had enlisted in England, where, he remarked, the Berkshire regiment might more properly be called the ‘Corkshire’ regiment.

The views of Casement also motivated James Connolly and the
Irish Worker
. Following the departure of James Larkin to America in October 1914, the voice of Connolly became even more influential in Labour party circles. His main reason for opposing the war derived from his concern for the Irish working class and the solidarity of the cause of European workers. However, writing in the
Irish Worker
on 14 November 1914 under the banner headline ‘We serve neither King nor Kaiser’, Connolly contributed a full page article on ‘Belgium rubber and Belgium neutrality’. Relying on consular reports of Casement and of other authorities, Connolly concurred with their verdict that

Belgium was given the alternative. Either to accept the terms of the Allies and enter the conspiracy against Germany – in which case no more publicity will be given to the Congo atrocities – or refuse to do so, and then England and France will proceed to annex the Congo in the interest of humanity.
²⁴

This association of ‘red rubber’ from the Congo with Belgium’s role in the war sought to undermine the recruiting appeal that Irishmen should
fight for gallant, little, Catholic Belgium. It was an association that Connolly and others were to highlight throughout the war.

While these feature articles on Britain, Germany and the war were appearing regularly in several journals, a series of articles by Terence Mac-Swiney and Pearse in
Irish Freedom
examined some of the principles that inspired the Volunteers. Those by MacSwiney ran from March 1911 until December 1912 and were published by Talbot press in 1921 as
Principles of Freedom
; those by Pearse ran from June 1913 to January 1914 and were published in book form by
Irish Freedom
in 1915 as
From a Hermitage
. The articles by Pearse offered a coherent expression of his changing ideology as he moved to join the Volunteers and the IRB. In these pages he expressed his concern that all should have the ‘readiness and ability to shoot’; his regard for, and desire to co-operate with, the orangemen of north east Ulster; and his preference for ‘the landless man against the master of millions’.
²⁵

However, it was not the positive ideology sustaining the Irish Volunteers that was the main worry of the Dublin Castle authorities. It was the constant attack on British war policy not only in the pages of
Irish Freedom
and the
Irish Volunteer
but also in the
Irish Worker
,
Sinn Féin
,
Ireland
and other journals. These journals were identified as responsible for the lack of recruiting and described by the royal commission as the ‘small but venomous group of papers, representing the Sinn Féin movement and Larkinism and the original anti-British spirit, in which the volunteers [
sic
] were founded’.
²⁶
While these journals were suppressed the monthly
Notes from Ireland
of the Irish Unionist Alliance continued publication until 1918.
²⁷

The December ban had grave implications for the printers of these journals. Sir Matthew Nathan stated that the
Irish Worker
had failed to observe all the requirements of DORA and, in consequence, ‘the type and removable parts of the printing machinery were removed’. The same action was taken against Patrick Mahon, 3 Yarnhall Street, Dublin, the printer of
Irish Freedom
.
²⁸
A reply to a question by Laurence Ginnell in the House of Commons on Mahon’s case revealed that the competent military authority (CMA) was the person empowered to implement DORA. The office of the competent military authority, and the term CMA, became part of Irish life, as did DORA, in dealing not only with the press but also with dissident individuals and issues of postal censorship. Major Price was associated with many of these cases and they merit consideration.
²⁹

DORA
AND THE PERSON

In a few short months after the commencement of the war, therefore, the context in which the propaganda contest between the British government and advanced nationalists was fought had been radically changed. No longer was it a matter of civil law but rather, with the introduction of the CMA and the creation of a special military area (SMA), the war was fought out under the terms of martial law defined by DORA and the associated regulations. Although the royal commission noted that the Defence of the Realm Amendment Act of 18 March 1915 had drawn ‘the teeth’ of DORA by permitting any subject to claim ‘to be tried by a jury in a civil court’, the application of the amendment to Ireland was not always observed. Indeed, the judicial process as applied to Ireland reflected the views of a Dublin committee, mainly composed of unionists, which had proposed that Lord Parmoor’s clause, which permitted recourse to a jury trial, ‘should be suspended by proclamation, so that charges under DORA might be dealt with by the military’.
³⁰

A case study shows that trial by jury was not a regular feature of DORA as applied in Ireland, and illustrates the role of the army and the police in the administration of the new Act. It also illustrates some of the functions of Major Price. On 29 July 1915 Herbert Pim, a convert to Catholicism and nationalism and a prominent writer under the pen-name of A. Newman, was charged, before a resident magistrate in Belfast, with failing to comply with section 14 of the DORA. In particular it was alleged that he had failed to comply ‘with the terms of a notice served upon him at the instance of a competent military authority for Ireland requiring him to leave the area stated in the notice, namely Ireland’. That the whole of Ireland, as well as expulsion from particular counties, might be defined as a designated area from which one might be expelled illustrates the draconian powers of the Act.
³¹

In the course of Pim’s appearance before the resident magistrate, Major Price was asked by Mr Hanna, Pim’s solicitor, to clarify the role of Major General Friend as the CMA. The following exchange took place: