1916 (5 page)

In the meantime Captain Spindler and the
Aud
were approaching the Irish coast. Spindler had been spotted a few times by the royal navy but, to his greatest surprise, the British let him pass. In his memoirs he wrote: ‘Our luck in this respect began to seem a little uncanny. Could there be something behind it? Did the British know about our coming?’
⁵⁷
The answers to Spindler’s questions are ‘yes’. Captain Hall and room 40 had decoded the messages between New York and Berlin and deliberately chose not to inform the British authorities lest they should betray to the Germans that they had cracked their codes. Hall also believed that, if a rising occurred, it would be a golden opportunity for the British army to get rid once and
for all of the Irish republicans who were badly equipped in arms.
⁵⁸
In other words, the security risk would be minimal. It is known that Hall did warn Admiral Bayly in Queenstown, who patiently waited for the
Aud
to show up.
⁵⁹
If Bayly had been warned it is most unlikely that somebody like Lord French had not been. It would have been totally irresponsible of Hall not to have warned the commander in chief of the home forces. As noted above, French would have welcomed the opportunity to give the Irish Volunteers ‘a real good “knock”’. But there is no evidence to substantiate this theory and some people had a rather poor opinion of French after his handling of the British Expeditionary Force in France.
⁶⁰
Furthermore, Hall tended to act as a maverick.
⁶¹
Spindler arrived in Tralee Bay on Thursday 20 April, but as Volunteer planning had gone awfully wrong, nobody came to collect the arms. He decided to leave the next day lest he should be spotted by the British. The royal navy, however, caught him on Saturday. Casement arrived on Friday by submarine, but was caught almost on arrival. He was immediately transferred to London, where, on Sunday 23 April, he was interrogated by Hall in person.
⁶²
Casement pleaded to be allowed to contact some people in Dublin to cancel the Rising, but Hall refused. According to Casement, he even said: ‘It is better that a cankering sore like this should be cut out.’
⁶³

There is no reason not to believe Casement as it all makes perfect sense. As is well known, due to MacNeill’s last minute intervention, the Rising eventually began on Monday 24 April. On that day also, the German supreme army command called off its submarine campaign against Britain as the Americans had protested.
⁶⁴
There was no need to upset the Americans, all the more since, theoretically, the Irish republicans should be fighting by now. The Irish phase of Verdun had begun. The Easter Rising lasted until Saturday 29 April when Pearse and the republican soldiers surrendered to the British forces. It caused about 450 deaths, 2,600 wounded, and the destruction of Dublin city centre.
⁶⁵
In May General Sir John Maxwell and his courts martial had the republican leaders shot; Casement would be hanged in August. This upset the population but also shocked Prime Minister Herbert Asquith who informed French that he was ‘a little surprised and perturbed by the drastic action of shooting so many of the rebel leaders’. French warned Maxwell about Asquith’s reservations but added that he personally would not interfere with his freedom of action.
⁶⁶
Again, French’s remark makes perfect sense if he had been informed by Hall or simply if he saw the execution of republican leaders as a perfect way to rid Ireland of disloyal elements.

But how had the French and the Austro-Hungarians reacted to the Rising in Dublin? Colonel Artus de la Panouse, the French military attaché in London, reported that it was obvious that Germany’s plan was to divert more British troops to Ireland, troops that would be better used on the front line. He also wrote that Sir Edward Carson had to bear some of the responsibility as it was he who had introduced the fashion of smuggling German arms into the country.
⁶⁷
On 19 June 1916 he sent a report to General Joseph Joffre, the commander in chief of the French army. About the republican leaders, de la Panouse wrote: ‘All those who took part in the [Rising] … showed real courage during their court martial and also when about to die.’ After this military tribute, he said that the British 59th division was now occupying Ireland whereas it should have been sent to France. This was bad news for Joffre who was planning, with General Douglas Haig, an offensive on the Somme, due to begin shortly, in order to relieve Verdun.
⁶⁸

In Austria-Hungary the news of the Rising was greeted with satisfaction and glee by the press. This was no surprise as the ‘hunger blockade’ imposed by the royal navy in the north and the Italians in the south was having dreadful effects.
⁶⁹
In Vienna the conservative
Reichspost
wrote that the Irish people had ceased to support John Redmond’s policy of reconciliation between the Irish and the British. It also made a comparison between the present British ‘hunger blockade’ and the Great Famine in Ireland: ‘England’s war of starvation plan … has not been invented for the first time by British rulers. It was already used by [English royal] dynasties with cold calculation against the Irish.’
⁷⁰
In Budapest the liberal
Pester Lloyd
opined: ‘In this war, liberal England has had the dubious honour to have had to put down a long and well-prepared rising … Not in fermenting Russia, not in the polyglot Austro-Hungarian monarchy did the revolution flare up, but in liberal England who lets herself be called the defender of small nations.’
⁷¹

It was, of course, in Germany that news of the Rising was most eagerly awaited. Once the seriousness of the fighting in Dublin became known in Berlin, mainly through the reports of an agent codenamed W.29d (which were forwarded to spymaster Walter Nicolai), the German secret service conceived a disinformation and scaremongering campaign directed against the Allies.
⁷²
The operation took place in Berne in Switzerland on 29 April. A double agent, pretending to work for France, contacted the French embassy and handed over a bogus report containing information he had gathered in Germany. The report was a clever mixture of true facts and lies.
Among other things, it described the preparations for the Rising and stated that ‘Casement was assured by the German government that he would get twenty million shillings if it succeeded’. The impression the report wanted to give was Germany’s total commitment to the Irish cause and that her navy was able to reach the Irish coast whenever it wanted. Although this cannot be substantiated, Nicolai was probably behind the operation. But French military intelligence knew that the spy was, in fact, working for Germany and was not duped. It is not known whether the French informed the British about this German operation, but General Joffre’s headquarters were kept up to date.
⁷³

As early as 6 May 1916 Ambassador Bernstorff sent a coded message to Berlin, explaining that he had been approached by Irish-American leaders who wanted support for a new rising. On 11 June the general staff answered: ‘Fundamentally willing to give further support to the Irish by all means. Request for speedy information concerning nature, timeframe and size of needed help.’
⁷⁴
It was not surprising that the Germans showed so much eagerness. The Rising had failed but it had shown that the Irish republicans meant business. During the following months the admiralty and the general staff put together a plan codenamed
Aufgabe P
. The support envisaged was three times more important than the one for the Easter Rising: 60,000 rifles, 20 machine guns and 12,000,000 rounds of ammunition. The sending of soldiers was initially planned but was eventually abandoned. Two steamers would deliver the arms in Galway and Tralee harbours. They would be accompanied by submarines to prevent the royal navy from approaching. The date set for the landing was 21 February 1917. Despite the naval battle of Jutland, which had taken place on 31 May 1916 and which had shown that the German navy would not be able to break the blockade of the royal navy in the North Sea, the German admiralty was convinced that the steamers could reach Ireland undetected during the long winter nights, under cover of fog and with the help of storms.
⁷⁵
Of
course Captain Spindler’s
Aud
had shown that such a voyage was feasible after all. The Germans, moreover, still did not know that room 40 was busy decoding their messages.

On 24 December 1916 Ambassador Bernstorff and John Devoy were informed of
Aufgabe P
.
⁷⁶
Interestingly, this new German departure was once again associated with a renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare, which was to begin on 1 February 1917.
⁷⁷
The Germans were ready to go when, on 16 January 1917, Bernstorff sent a message cancelling the whole operation.
⁷⁸
What had happened? After the Easter Rising, John Devoy
was corresponding with an Irish Volunteer called Liam Clarke, who was trying to re-organise the Volunteer movement. In one of his messages Clarke emphatically stated that, if a second rising was to take place, the Germans had to send not only arms but also men. Clarke also wrote that some republicans had been dissatisfied with the German help during the Easter Rising.
⁷⁹
Since the general staff had decided not to send soldiers, Devoy sent a coded message to Berlin outlining the reasons why
Aufgabe P
had to be cancelled.
⁸⁰

But it was not the end of the story yet. As the archives in the Public Record Office in London show, room 40 had intercepted and decoded the messages regarding
Aufgabe P
, including the one that
cancelled
the operation. Once again, this was a golden opportunity to get rid of disloyal elements in Ireland and keep the republican movement decapitated. On 17 February 1917 Dublin Castle was warned and a list of about thirty republicans and republican sympathisers was drawn up. These men were arrested on 21 February, the night the Germans were supposed to come. Among them were Terence MacSwiney, Dr Patrick McCartan, Darrel Figgis, Seán T. O’Kelly and J.J. O’Kelly. There was nothing that proved their involvement in
Aufgabe P
and Liam Clarke was not on the list.
⁸¹
As Dr Brian Murphy has written: ‘[The men] … were given a sharp reminder that ultimate power lay with the British government.’
⁸²
But, above all, what the
Aufgabe P
episode does prove, beyond any doubt, is the truth of the theory put forward by Professor Eunan O’Halpin in 1984, namely that Captain Reginald Hall intentionally let the Easter Rising happen.
⁸³
Indeed, the British approach to the Easter Rising and to
Aufgabe P
is essentially the same.

The saga had a last, somehow amusing, twist. On 21 March, in the House of Commons in London, the independent nationalist parliamentarian Laurence Ginnell asked the home secretary under what conditions the arrested Irishmen were detained. What Ginnell ignored, however, was that General Bryan Mahon wanted him, together with Count Plunkett and Father Michael Flanagan, to be arrested too! But, fearing adverse political repercussions, Ginnell, Plunkett and Flanagan had been let off the hook.
⁸⁴

Finally, Professor Stewart’s assertion that the Irish home rule crisis played a role in the events leading to the outbreak of the First World War is totally founded. The Irish factor in German and Austro-Hungarian decision-making was an important one as both Germans and Austro-Hungarians deemed that it would in all likelihood prevent the British
from entering a wide-scale conflict in Europe. Their mistake was dreadful. The combination of the Serbian crisis in central Europe and the Irish crisis in western Europe was lethal. Also, there can be no longer any doubt that some British officials at the highest level let the Easter Rising deliberately happen. We know the name of at least one man involved, Captain Reginald Hall, and the name of another man who was warned, Admiral Bayly. But they cannot have been the only ones. It would seem rather obvious that some people in the army were also involved. These facts ultimately lead to the question: who was responsible for the outbreak of the Easter Rising? It might well be argued that Hall had little choice in the matter as he wanted to protect his extremely valuable source of information. Arresting Pádraig Pearse and others before the Rising took place might have revealed to the Germans that something was wrong with their codes. But could those 450 deaths, 2,600 wounded and the destruction of Dublin city centre not have been avoided? Did Reginald Hall and Foreign Office Secretary Arthur Balfour not work out a clever way of keeping from the Germans the fact that they had intercepted and decoded the famous Zimmermann telegram in February 1917, in which the Germans promised their help to Mexico if she went to war against the United States?
⁸⁵
On that occasion
nobody was either killed or wounded. If the Military Council initiated the Easter Rising and therefore bore a great responsibility, can it not be argued that some British officials bore a greater responsibility still for letting it happen?

Two images dominate historical memory of the Ulster crisis of 1912–14, as seen in the grainy, black and white film of the time: the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) marching and drilling; and the Irish Volunteers looking equally resolute. They seem to bear witness to the militarisation of Ireland and the readiness to resort to armed force by unionists and then nationalists; and thus point towards the Easter Rising because, as Eoin MacNeill wrote in his memoirs, Sir Edward Carson exercised one of the most influential effects on the Irish revolution when he exploited British laws in Ireland through the creation of the UVF. Now the British army could not be used to prevent the enrolment and drilling of Volunteers in any part of the twenty eight [sic] counties. Yet there are more important issues to be explored which arise from the pre-war Ulster crisis. MacNeill went on to declare that the Irish Volunteers represented citizen forces which would rival the UVF claim to hold Ireland ‘for the empire’.
¹
Pádraig Pearse, at the Rotunda meeting where the Irish Volunteers were founded, would go no further than to claim that ‘Ireland armed would at any rate make a better bargain with the empire than Ireland unarmed’.
²
And there was a significant interlude, between the outbreak of the great European war in August 1914 and the Easter Rising of April 1916, when history seemed about to move in a different direction, with nationalist Volunteers and Ulster Volunteers serving in the same army and in the same uniform, though mutual suspicions remained.