1916 (50 page)

C.S. (Todd) Andrews, a founder member of Fianna Fáil and senior civil servant, was fifteen years old at the time of the Rising. Living at 42 Summerhill, he was very close to the fighting in O’Connell Street, Dublin. A lifelong republican and political activist, he recalled the following in the first volume of his memoirs, published in 1979:

The first open manifestation of the deep public feeling aroused by the executions was at the month’s mind for the dead leaders. A month’s mind is the mass celebrated for the soul of a relative or friend a month after his death. It was the first opportunity that sympathisers of the rebels had to come out in the open. I went with my father to the first of the month’s minds, which was for the brothers Pearse, at Rathfarnham. We arrived well in time for mass but could not get into the church and the forecourt was packed right out to the road. I was surprised to see so many well dressed and obviously well-to-do people present. The Volunteers I knew were shop assistants, small clerks, labourers or tradesmen. I did not realise that there was, quite apart from the effect of the rebellion and the executions on public opinion, a sizeable section of Irish nationalists, disillusioned with Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary party, who were anxious to find an alternative outlet for their beliefs. In the sub-conscious of every nationalist, there was a sympathetic response to rebellion.
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The June issue of the
Catholic Bulletin
reflected the change of public mood. It had its editorial censored. As a consequence the pages were left blank with ‘Dublin – May 1916’ written on the final page.
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The section, ‘Matters of the Moment’ was also left blank, and the diary of current events censored. John Hagan, the Roman correspondent for the
Bulletin
,
caustically began his July ‘Letter from Rome’: ‘Lest the censor, in his anxiety that nothing should come between his efforts to found a new reign of peace, harmony, justice, honour, fair-play, truth and charitableness in Ireland,’ might object if he wrote on matters of the moment or even the last century, he would confine himself to a tour of Rome in the footsteps of the earls of Tyrone.
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But between July and the end of the year the magazine ran a series of articles profiling the executed leaders and men of the Rising. The final edition for 1916 carried profiles of the widows and families of those leaders. The event was presented as being very much a Catholic and/ or Christian rebellion. The issue was bold and provocative, and it proved to be a very popular number.

In his diary entry for 22 July Curran recorded details of a meeting with a former internee, Michael Lennon of Longford Terrace, Dublin. He mentioned ‘the barbarous treatment of the prisoners in Kilmainham. He
himself was half-strangled by soldiers with his own necktie.’ Local feeling had been incensed by such experiences. There was also a very negative reaction to General Maxwell’s report, including his supplementary report of 26 May, which was published on 22 July. Curran described the supplementary report as ‘plainly a political apology for the executions, etc’. It was a ‘scandalous and dishonourable calumny on the Volunteers’ fighting conduct, accusing them of murder of police, looting, etc’. He also noted that he had attended a meeting in the Phoenix Park against partition, which had attracted a ‘crowd of four or five thousand’.

Curran captures the atmosphere of those days in two letters, sent to the rector and vice rector of the Irish College. Curran wrote to O’Riordan on 29 July:

We are all in a great ferment of mind in this country, though there is no probability of another rising, unless things go to the dogs altogether. There are considerable stores of arms in many districts; there is any amount of young hot blood ready to rise and become martyrs. The country element is largely untrained, but we think ourselves past masters in rifle work and apparently trust to Germans or Americans or some
deus ex machina
for artillery and other luxuries and refinements of warfare. The spirit is certainly willing, but the materials I fear are sadly weak. I need not tell you how bitter feeling is against the party over the attempted partition of Ulster. The north west is ferocious at the attempt of Devlin and co. to hook them in with the selfish motive of bettering their own position in the Northern Pale. The party would not secure twenty seats in Ireland at present. They know that Devlin himself confessed it in private and that is why that one of the essential conditions always is that the existing MPs are to be the members of the new body, and therefore we had all the furore over the ‘diminished representation’. Diminished representation anywhere means an election and that means the kicking out of the partitioners. Here in Dublin we are torn between denunciation of the party and an agitation to secure a public inquiry into the military murders. These are more numerous, more cold-blooded and more revolting than even well informed people ever suspected. It is only within the last fortnight or so that all the evidence has been more or less centralised. If the govt still hold out against an inquiry, it is possible that a private commission may be held. As it is, sworn depositions are already made out. The wholesale military looting has now taken a very subordinate place.
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He told O’Riordan that the

American Representatives of Cardinal Farley’s Irish Relief Fund have come over and have gone about everywhere gathering information and learning the extent and nature of the problem before the relief committees. Two came a fortnight ago. Thomas Hughes Kelly, the treasurer, and another arrived at Liverpool about Wed. last, but were forbidden to land and return to the States today with one of the men who arrived here a fortnight ago. They will raise Cain in America. These feelings run up to boiling point. These Americans say that the Americans won’t have war. They expect, and I think welcome, the prospect that Hughes will be elected. They say he is very upright and a real, and not a pretended, neutral. They don’t expect war in Mexico. But of course you know everything from the American College. I wonder could you get me from some American in Rome ‘cuttings’ of the Irish-American demonstrations.
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On 30 July 1916 Curran wrote to Hagan:

Public feeling in Dublin is getting more and more fierce. Everything seems calculated to embitter it. Home rule, partition and above all the refusal of the govt to enquire into and punish those guilty of the military murders. These are by no means confined to King’s street. Half of the deported are already back and it looks as if Frongoch will be broken up. They are being sent back in fifties to avoid demonstrations. Apparently a few hundreds will be retained in England – partly as hostages perhaps, but more particularly to prevent the rise of literary activity of an inconvenient kind. It is very remarkable to note the releases and the detained. The latter are all the literary, journalistic and student characters, even though many of them had nothing at all to do with the Rising and some were actually against it. These men are being sent to Reading prison – also the trades leaders – include Griffith, Darrell Figgis (as innocent as the king) Seán O’Kelly etc and a few university students. The real active fighters, including captains etc., have been sent home but the unfortunate quill-drivers and BAs are kept. There is a family [name blotted out and M. J. C. written over it to indicate erasure made by Curran and not the censor] which had four boys in the Rising. One was a terror altogether, in the middle of the gun-running and gun-buying from soldiers. He and two of his brothers released but a fourth – a quiet student fellow studying for his degree – is detained … They only want to be called out again. I never saw such spirit. Imagine trying to conscript these chaps!
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The letter to Hagan was much more radical than his missive the previous day to O’Riordan. It continued:

But despite suppression of papers, the censor, deportation, imprisonment and executions, I never saw such literary activity … Have to see specimens of the mosquito press. The
Catholic Bulletin
for July was sold out in a week and thousands are going around begging, borrowing and stealing the copies among their friends. Gill won’t reprint it, though pressed to do so. The number of MS poems in circulation is amazing – mostly very good. The latest I saw is one ‘Shall Casement die?’, a fine but perfervid protest as to what will happen if the inconceivable event takes place. It is thought that Casement will be reprieved. There will be ructions in America if he is executed. I don’t know whether you can appreciate American influence in our affairs through the American College. At any rate it predominates everything at present. Wilson knows he will be forced out if Casement is executed and the English don’t want Hughes. It is said (we had it from Mrs Green) that Doyle, the American attorney, was an agent of Wilson’s. He had an interview with Grey [the British foreign secretary]. Grey asked him: ‘Who will be elected president?’ ‘I’ll tell you that,’ said Doyle, ‘when I know Casement’s fate.’

Curran concluded: ‘John Redmond and co. are in a hopeless minority in Ireland at present. The party would not carry 20 seats. That is why there are to be no elections or diminution of the present members.’
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On 25 July Walsh broke his public silence. In a strong letter to the press he said that he had never had a moment’s doubt for years that the cause of home rule for Ireland was being led in parliament along a line that ‘could only bring it to disaster’. He lamented that the majority of those who still retained faith in the efficacy of constitutional agitation had become hopelessly possessed of the disastrous idea that the party or its leadership could do no wrong. Fair criticism had come to an end, he wrote, and anyone who ventured to express an opinion at variance with that of the party at once became a ‘fair mark for every political adventurer in the country to assail with the easily handled epithets of “factionalist”, “wrecker” or “traitor”’. With what the archbishop described as the abandonment of the policy of independent opposition, ‘our country is now face to face with a truly awful prospect’. Home rule was still on the statute book but, he asked, would Irish nationalists any longer be fooled by a repetition of the party cries that this fact made them masters of the situation? He did not think so.

On 28 July Walsh motored from Wicklow to meet an American relief delegation led by Archdeacon John Murphy and John Gill. The archbishop considered the meeting very important as it allowed him to be briefed on Irish-American opinion.
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Meanwhile the fate of Roger Casement became the focus of nationalist attention in Ireland. This was a further source of radicalisation. The manner in which the government conducted itself appalled many in Ireland. Frantic efforts were made to mobilise international public opinion to prevent him meeting the same fate as other leaders of the Rising. It is worth noting that on 18 July, while convalescing in Wicklow, Walsh motored to Courtown, Co. Wexford, to meet Mrs Alice Stopford Green, who had written to him concerning Casement. Curran did not accompany Walsh on that occasion but surmised that the archbishop ‘could only express his sympathy and confess his inability to achieve anything useful’.
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Casement’s trial lasted three days. He was sentenced to death on 29 July. Strenuous efforts were made to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Members of the clergy and hierarchy, including Walsh and Logue, lent their names to the campaign. In a letter published in the press on 20 July 1916, Cardinal Logue wrote: ‘From motives of mercy and charity, and not from any sympathy whatever with the unfortunate course which was taken, I shall be prepared to sign any petition for the reprieve of Roger Casement.’ The archbishop of Dublin and several other Irish bishops also signed the doomed appeal.
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It was to no avail. On 3 August
Casement was hanged in Pentonville gaol.

Curran wrote to O’Riordan on 30 August. He noted: ‘Things are fairly quiet as compared with Lent and Easter, but the least thing will cause uproar. Some ‘loyalists’ are terribly anxious for conscription and there is no limit to the blundering and bigotry of govt.’ Referring to the murder of Sheehy Skeffington, he was anxious to have inquiries into other extra-judicial killings investigated: ‘If we can only get the King’s st and other murders examined we will have revelations! Outside the executions, all the murder and tyranny was due to the lower grade officers and Orange and English Tommies.’ In a postscript he set out what in his view were the real causes of the Rising. The breakdown of the constitutional movement, he wrote, was due to two things: ‘(1) Carson and Curragh rebels and the weak govt (2) the abandonment of independent opposition by the Irish party through corruption and jobbery. Old men could stand by calmly, if helplessly, but young blood could not.’
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Bishop O’Dwyer was one such ‘old man’ but his hostility to the British was akin to the feelings felt amongst the younger generation. His antagonism to the Irish party had grown even stronger and he wrote to O’Riordan on 31 August:

It has been good of you to tell me of the Holy Father’s most kind remark. It is the approval that is worth something. Our national affairs are in a strange muddle. P. Albion has been true to her name, and the wretched creatures who have got possession of ‘the machine’ are not men enough to meet the crisis. They will get nothing, and they know it, but keep on duping the people at home with promises.
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O’Dwyer showed compassion on hearing of the death of the Irish MP, Tom Kettle. He wrote to O’Riordan on 21 September 1916: ‘Poor Tom Kettle, a very brilliant fellow, was killed last week in the battle of the Somme, in which the slaughter sees to be enormous. Kettle they tell me, was a good fellow, but for the past few years turned on “the bottle”, which explains a good deal.’
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