Chapter VIII: Part 8

Before they left the cemetery, Brogan made a complete confession of all he knew about the tragedy. He told Blake that information had been given to the G.H.Q. of the I.R.A. in Dublin that Drake was on the point of taking command of a company of Auxiliaries who were to be stationed in his own house, the idea being to use Drake’s local knowledge, which Blake knew to be quite untrue. On the Sunday two gunmen arrived from Dublin with orders to shoot Drake and burn his house. Finding out that Drake intended to go to Dublin the following day by the mail train, they commandeered a Ford in Ballybor, taking Brogan with them as a guide, and took him out of the train at Knockshinnagh; and after the murder they returned to Ballybor, superintended the burning of Drake’s house, and then disappeared into the night on stolen bicycles.

Shortly afterwards Brogan heard a rumour that Drake had been murdered and buried in the bog cemetery, and he became very uneasy. That night he and three of the Volunteers received orders to take part in a police ambush on the far side of the Slievenamoe Mountains, which order they obeyed, going in a Ford.

In the ambush a strange gunman—none of the local Volunteers knew who he was or where he came from—was killed, and when some argument arose as to how to dispose of his body, Brogan at once volunteered to take the body back with him and bury it in the bog cemetery, his intention being to bury the gunman on top of Drake, so that if by chance the police opened the grave they would find the body of the gunman and be put off the scent. After the first visit of the police the Volunteers had removed Moran to a Sinn Fein detention prison, fearing that he might break down and give information.

XVIII.
A JEW IN GAELIC CLOTHING.

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”—St. Matt. vii. 15.

Probably very few people in England have the remotest idea to what extent anarchy was rife throughout the south and west of Ireland, even in parts of loyal Ulster, during the year 1920.

Most of the Irish members of Parliament, seventy-three to be exact, swore allegiance to Dail Eireann. Of these, seven lived abroad, and the remainder spent most of their time in prison.

At the beginning of the year Sinn Fein captured practically every County Council, Rural Council, and Poor Law Guardian’s Board in twenty-seven counties; nearly all these Boards defied the Local Government Board, and took their orders from Dail Eireann direct.

Next came the burning of County and Civil Courts, police barracks and Petty Sessions Courts, followed by murderous attacks on police and Loyalists throughout the south and west, though chiefly in the south at first.

In many parts Loyalists were forced under the jurisdiction of Sinn Fein Land, Arbitration, and Civil Courts. Solicitors had their choice of practising in these Courts or not practising at all, and a solicitor must live as well as another man.

The police had no power outside their barracks, and in many districts a policeman was never seen for weeks on end, whole districts being policed by civilian Volunteers.

A large national loan was raised openly in defiance of the British Government, its avowed purpose being to carry on war against England and to break up the British Army. Sinn Fein banks and insurance societies were floated, the money obtained being used for the same purposes. Sinn Fein laws were passed and enforced, and a large army organised and built up, drilled and armed.

At this time the British Prime Minister repeatedly assured the country that there never could and never would be an Irish Republic; while Lloyd George talked De Valera acted, and the Republic came into being while Lloyd George was still talking.

During the summer of 1919 a very ordinary and at first uninteresting strike of shop assistants took place in Ballybor for higher wages and shorter hours, and the shopkeepers managed to carry on with the aid of their families, and few of the public suffered any inconvenience from the strike.

Good relations still existed between master and employee in nearly every shop in the town, and the shopkeepers were just on the point of an amicable settlement with their assistants when a Transport Union agitator, or, as he called himself, a Gaelic organiser, appeared on the scene, and in a few hours the whole situation was changed. The local secretary of the Transport Union, to which the shop assistants belonged, at once broke off all negotiations with the shopkeepers, and before night several acts of sabotage had been committed in the town.

The next morning saw the strike begin afresh in deadly earnest. Every street was picketed by strikers, who refused to allow any one, townspeople or country people, to purchase any foodstuffs until the shopkeepers had given in to their impossible demands. Doubtless the idea was that the starving people would bring such pressure to bear on the shopkeepers that they would be forced to give in and grant practically any terms to the shop assistants. In a word, the old game of blackmail.

Several unfortunate old country-women, who had managed to evade the pickets and to purchase provisions, were caught on their way home by the strikers and their purchases trodden into the mud of the streets. One old clergyman, who lived several miles from Ballybor in an isolated district, managed not only to dodge the pickets and buy much-needed food, but to get two miles on his way home. However, a picket of shop-boys, mounted on bicycles, overtook him, threw all his provisions into a bog-hole, beat him severely, turned his pony loose in the bog, and left him by the roadside.

At first the shopkeepers were bewildered and at a complete loss to understand the sudden change in the attitude of their assistants, but on hearing Paidraig O’Kelly, the so-called Gaelic organiser, make his first public speech, they knew at once what they were up against.

In 1914, before the war broke out, all thinking Irishmen knew that the coming and growing danger in Ireland was the Transport Union, formed originally for the perfectly legitimate object of raising the status and wages of the working classes (quite apart from the small farmer class) by combined action. But in a very short time this Union became the instrument of Bolshevism in Ireland under the able command of James Connelly, a disciple of Lenin’s long before the latter had risen to power.

And so thoroughly and well had Connelly made out his plans for the future that in every town and village the complete machinery of Soviet Government had been prepared, ready to start working the instant the revolution should break out. Men had been appointed to every public office, and the houses of the well-to-do allotted to the different Commissioners and officers of each local Soviet.

Luckily for Ireland, the rebellion of 1916 saw the end of James Connelly, probably the most dangerous and one of the cleverest men of modern times in Ireland.

With the death of Connelly and the disappearance of Larkin to America, the Transport Union fell into the hands of less able men, but still carried on successfully with agrarian agitation, though marking time as regards revolution.

After the war the Union found itself up against Sinn Fein, and for a time it looked as though the two parties would come to blows and so nullify each other’s efforts. Unfortunately both parties saw that their only chance of success was to co-operate; doubtless the Transport Union thought that if the rebellion was successful their chance would come in the general confusion, and that they would be able to get their Soviet Government working before the Sinn Feiners could get going.

During 1919 and 1920 Sinn Fein and the Transport Union nearly came to blows on several occasions in the west over agrarian trouble. The Transport Union wanted to take advantage of the absence of law and order to hunt every landlord and big farmer out of the country and divide their lands amongst the landless members of the Union, while Sinn Fein policy was to wait until the Republic had been set up, when, so they declared, there would be an equitable division made.

The Ballybor strike collapsed as suddenly as it had started with the disappearance of Paidraig O’Kelly. The previous day a public meeting on the town fair green had been held by the Transport Union, and all the young men and girls of the town and countryside had attended. At first the local firebrands addressed the meeting with their usual grievance, and then O’Kelly spoke for a full hour. At first he confined himself to the strike, and carried his audience with him when he painted a vivid picture of the different lives led by the shopkeepers and their “slaves,” how the former and their families lived on the fat of the land, the latter in the gutter.

The crowd had now had all they wanted and were prepared to go home to tea, but O’Kelly had a good deal more to tell them. Suddenly and without any warning he began to unfold the doctrine of Lenin, to show them how the world and all the good things in it ought really to belong to them, and that these good things would never be theirs until the ruling classes were forced to disgorge them, and that the only way to make the swine disgorge was to kill them one and all—gentry, business men, and shopkeepers.

The man could really speak, and held his audience spellbound while he unfolded the Irish Eldorado of the future; but through all his speech ran the one idea to kill, always to kill those in a higher station of life than his listeners. To finish with he called upon them to start with the police, to shoot them like the dogs they were, and when they were gone the rest would be easy.

Sergeant M’Grath had been detailed to attend the meeting to take down in shorthand any speeches which might require explaining afterwards, but until O’Kelly started to preach the doctrine of Lenin he had not opened his notebook.

The sergeant had served in most parts of Ireland, but O’Kelly’s speech and brogue puzzled him: the man spoke like an Englishman trying to imitate the Irish brogue, but with a thickness of speech which the sergeant could not place. Nor could he place the shape of O’Kelly’s head, a round bullet-shaped one with a high narrow forehead and coarse black hair.

He duly reported O’Kelly’s speech to the D.I., who endeavoured to find out where the man came from, but failed to get any definite information. One rumour said that O’Kelly came from Cork, another from America, and yet a third that he was a native of Castleport. So the only thing to do was to arrest the man and then try to identify him; but O’Kelly had completely disappeared.

Nothing further appears to have been heard of O’Kelly in Ireland during 1919, but the following year an itinerant lecturer on beekeeping turned up in Co. Donegal, who bore a strong resemblance to Lenin’s disciple. This man’s practice was to give a short lecture on bees in school-houses, and then to launch forth into pure Bolshevism—a complete waste of time on the average Donegal peasant. Next he was heard of in Belfast, where he was lucky to escape a violent death at the hands of some infuriated shipyard workers.

In May 1920 the Transport Union in Ballybor began suddenly to give Blake a lot of trouble—cases of men being dragged out of their beds at night and forced with a loaded gun at their heads to join the Union steadily increased.

Several landlords who employed a good many men were threatened that, if they did not pay a higher wage than the maximum laid down by law, all their men would be called out and that they would in addition be boycotted. And any who refused at once had their hayricks burnt and their cattle injured.

Rumours came to Blake’s ears of a man making extraordinary speeches at night in the different country school-houses throughout the district to audiences of young men and girls, speeches which apparently combined Sinn Fein aims with red revolution.

During 1920 Sergeant M’Grath had been sent to Grouse Lodge as sergeant-in-charge, and thinking that he recognised O’Kelly in the revolutionary lecturer who was touring the district, he kept a careful watch on the Cloonalla school-house, and within a week had surprised and captured the man, who turned out to be O’Kelly.

O’Kelly was brought up before the R.M. in Ballybor Barracks, charged with inciting the people to murder the police during the strike of 1919, and pleaded not guilty.

The R.M., who looked upon the man as a harmless lunatic (he had not heard him haranguing a crowd), offered to let him go provided he entered into a recognisance to be of good behaviour and could find two sureties in fairly substantial sums. O’Kelly replied that he dared not enter into a recognisance to be of good behaviour, and further, that if he was released he would continue to preach revolution. Whereupon the R.M. gave him three months and left the barracks.

Blake then saw O’Kelly alone, and endeavoured to find out who and what he was. It was obvious that the man was not an Irishman, nor did he appear to be English. O’Kelly refused to give him any information regarding himself.

While this interview was going on an Auxiliary, whose home was in Scotland, and who commanded a section of Cadets on temporary duty in Ballybor, looked in to see Blake and found him with O’Kelly.

After O’Kelly had left the room the Auxiliary told Blake that he knew the man well, and had often seen him in Glasgow, where, previous to 1919, the man had lived for two years working as a Jewish Bolshevik agent, and that he had suddenly disappeared from Glasgow when the police began to get unpleasantly attentive.

XIX.
MOUNTAIN WARFARE.

The movements of the flying columns of the I.R.A.—gangs of armed ruffians, usually numbering about forty, but sometimes more, sometimes less, and led by men with military experience (ex-soldiers and even ex-officers, to their everlasting shame)—have always corresponded accurately to the amount of police and military pressure brought to bear on them, which pressure has continually fluctuated in agreement to the whims and brain-waves of the politicians in power.

Figuratively speaking, these same politicians have kept the police and military with one hand tied behind their back, and sometimes when the screams of the mob politicians in the House have been loudest, have very nearly tied up both their hands. If a chart had been kept during the Irish war showing the relative intensity of the politicians’ screams and the activities of the I.R.A., the reading of it would be highly interesting and instructive.

Extra pressure, more rigid enforcement of existing restrictions on movement, and increased military activity have always resulted in a general stampede of flying columns to the mountains of the west, where the gunmen could rest in comparative safety, and swagger about among the simple and ignorant mountain-folk to their hearts’ content.

Here they would stay until the politicians, frightened by inspired questions in the House, would practically confine the military and police to barracks. The gunmen would then, with great reluctance, leave the safety of the mountains, and return to the southern front, to carry on once more the good work of political murder.

And so the game of seesaw went on. Every time that the Crown forces saw victory in sight the politicians would drag them back again to start all afresh. The wonder is that the Crown forces stuck it so long with every hand against them, and their worst abuse coming from a cowardly section of their own countrymen in England.

Early in 1921 the Crown forces in the south of Ireland suddenly gave forth signs that a determined effort was to be made to deal effectively, once and for all, with the gangs of armed murderers and robbers roaming the country, masquerading as soldiers of the Irish Republic; and again the flying columns fled in haste to their mountain retreats in the west, a part of the country where the majority of the inhabitants have always done their best to keep out of the trouble, with a few isolated exceptions.

This time they stayed longer; in fact, each time it became harder to induce the gunmen to forsake the peace of the mountains for the war in the south. After a time they started to vary the monotony by carrying out punitive expeditions against the police and the unfortunate Loyalists in the surrounding lowlands, but always to fly back to the mountains at the first sight of a force of police or soldiers.

Ex-soldiers were the chief game at this period. A district would be chosen where there were no troops and few police. A list of all ex-soldiers living in this district would be made out, and guides provided by the local I.R.A. commandant. Each ex-soldier would be visited in turn during a night, given his choice of active service with the I.R.A. or a sudden death. Those who remained loyal to the King would be led out and butchered like sheep, though possibly the murderers would not take the trouble to remove their victims, but would fire a volley into them as they lay in bed, and leave them there. Truly a brave army!

Transport presented no difficulty to the gunmen. The British Government took practically no steps to control the movements of motors, motor bicycles, or push-bicycles, except the motor-permit farce, which greatly inconvenienced Loyalists only. All they had to do was to commandeer as many cars or bicycles as they wanted, where, when, and how they liked.

However, this was not all the work which the Sinn Fein leaders intended their flying columns to carry out, and in order to induce the gunmen to return to duty the usual noisy peace squeal was started in England, so that conditions might be made pleasanter for the gunmen in the south. The murdering of ex-soldiers and helpless Loyalists could be easily carried out by local Volunteers under a well-seasoned murderer—an excellent method of initiating raw recruits into the methods of the Sinn Fein idea of warfare. The British Government, always great judges of Irish character, thought that the Sinn Fein leaders were coming to their senses at last, took off the pressure, and the gunmen duly returned to duty.

* * * * *

At length there came a time when these columns really got the wind up, stampeded to the western mountains, and this time refused point-blank to return to duty.

In the late spring of 1921 Blake was suddenly called over to England on private business in London, and afterwards went down to the country to spend a few days with the parents of a man with whom he had served in France.

The day after his arrival Blake’s host told him that a Black and Tan, a native of the place, had been murdered in Ireland a few days previously, and was to be buried that day in the parish graveyard, and asked Blake if he would accompany him to the funeral.

When passing through Dublin on his way to England, Blake had seen in the Castle the account of how this unfortunate Black and Tan had met his death—shot in the back when walking in the streets of a small western town with a girl; and not content with that, the murderers had fired a volley at him as he lay wounded on the ground, and even fired several shots after the girl as she fled shrieking up the street. So terrified were the townspeople that, though there were many in the streets at the time, not one dared to even approach the dying constable, and it was not until a full hour afterwards that a passing police patrol found him lying dead in a great pool of blood. Incidentally, the murderers had by then put sixteen miles behind them by means of stolen bicycles.

Blake accepted, expecting to see a large funeral to do honour to the murdered policeman, but to his great surprise and indignation found that only the near relations of the murdered man were present.

Returning from the funeral, Blake happened to see the local police inspector in the main street of the little town, and at once tackled him about the funeral, wanting to know why the local police had not been present as a last mark of respect to a man who had died for his country.

The inspector seemed greatly surprised and rather taken aback, and replied that he could hardly be expected to turn his men out to attend the funeral of a murderer.

For a moment Blake saw red, and but for a natural horror of making a scene in a public place, would probably have knocked the inspector down. Then, thinking that there must be a bad blunder somewhere, he asked whom the Black and Tan had murdered, and how he had met his death. The inspector admitted that the Black and Tan had been murdered, he believed, and then opened out on the crimes and atrocities which the Black and Tans had committed in Ireland—murder, rape, and highway robbery,—in fact, the usual list of atrocities which is generally to be read in the Sinn Fein propaganda pamphlets.

Blake waited patiently until the inspector had given him a harrowing picture of the condition of the south and west of Ireland: heartrending accounts of homeless and starving women and children, old and young men and boys hunted like wild beasts in the mountains and living on berries and roots; shops burnt to the ground and looted by Black and Tans in mufti; and of men and boys shot by Auxiliaries in the dead of night before the eyes of their relations.

He then asked the inspector who had given him this information, adding that he would like to see the proof of it, and at the same time telling him that he was a D.I. in the R.I.C.

The inspector invited Blake to go to the police station with him, and here, as Blake had expected, he was shown the usual lying propaganda and pamphlets of Sinn Fein, which have been distributed by the million throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and the U.S.A. An extract from one pamphlet is worth repeating:—

“Famine is about to add thousands of innocent victims to the hundreds of thousands already in need of the bare necessities that keep body and soul together. In every Irish village and town sickness, pestilence, and death invade the humble homes, striking swiftly and surely the mothers and children incapable of resistance through months of struggle against cold and hunger.... Children of tender years, ragged and wretched, trudge daily through the cold to a school now used for a relief station to obtain the one meal a day on which they live—a piece of bread and a warm drink.”

Seeing from his ribbons that the man had served in the war, Blake asked him if he would take the word of a brother officer against that of a Sinn Fein rebel. The inspector seemed to think this a good joke, and replied: “A brother officer every time.” “Well, then,” said Blake, “as an ex-British officer, I give you my word of honour that all those pamphlets you have just shown me are a pack of lies circulated by Irish rebels to ruin your country.”

Still the inspector was only half convinced, and in spite of all Blake could say he saw when he at last left that the man’s belief in the printed pamphlets of Sinn Fein was still unshaken. Such is the tremendous effect of print, whether newspapers or pamphlets, on the modern mind, and the firm belief in the old saying that there can be no smoke without a fire.

That afternoon Blake was carried off by his hostess to a drawing-room lecture at a big country-house. His hostess was not quite sure what the lecture was about, but believed it had something to do with Russia. After tea the lecturer arose, and before he uttered a word, Blake had a premonition of what was coming. A tall thin man, with pronounced Celtic peculiarities and a mane of long, lank, black hair, Blake had seen his prototype thousands of times in the west of Ireland.

Throwing back his great mane with a jerk of his head, the lecturer started on an impassioned recital of the atrocities committed in Ireland by the British Army of Occupation, practically the same collection of lies and wicked quarter truths which Blake had heard from the police inspector that morning.

Blake watched the faces of the audience closely, mostly women of the upper and middle classes, and could see that the lecturer’s ready tongue was making a deep impression on them. There was no yawning or fidgeting, and the audience, many of them with the parted lips of rapt attention, kept their eyes riveted on the quite interesting face of the wild man of the west, camouflaged by a London tailor to harmonise with an English drawing-room.

Blake let the man have a fair innings, and then while he was drinking a glass of water (Blake felt like asking him if he would not prefer poteen) stood up and said quietly, “Ladies and gentlemen, so far this lecture has been nothing but a pack of lies from beginning to end. The lecturer is a Sinn Fein rebel camouflaged as an Irish gentleman, and I am a D.I. of the Royal Irish Constabulary. During the war I fought for your country, and the lecturer probably assisted the Boches in every underhand and mean way he could. You can judge for yourselves which of us is most probably telling the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

The wild man turned with a wicked snarl, all signs of the veneer gone, and his face reminded Blake of a cornered gunman he had had to deal with once during a raid on a Dublin lodging-house; and there would probably have been an ugly and unseemly scene, but the owner of the house intervened, and gently but firmly led the wild man out of the room, while Blake and his friends left the house at once.

On his return Blake found a cipher wire from his County Inspector recalling him at once, and going by car to London managed to catch the Irish mail from Euston. All the sleepers were engaged, but by good luck he found himself in possession of a first-class compartment.

While idly smoking a cigarette and meditating on the extraordinary amount of Sinn Fein propaganda he had met with in the course of one short day in England, he noticed a well-dressed slight girl pass and repass the glass door of his compartment several times. As the mail pulled out of the station this girl pulled open the sliding-door from the corridor and sat down opposite Blake, remarking that it was a grand evening, and thereby unconsciously informing him that she was Irish.

Suddenly realising that he was smoking, he asked the girl, who he could see was unusually pretty and quite young, if she had any objection, and, as he had expected, she readily entered into conversation.

After a time she remarked, with a pretty engaging smile, that she saw he had nothing to read, and getting down her suit-case, handed Blake a handful of the identical pamphlets he had already seen that morning in the English country police station. In addition, there was one fresh one on “The Irish Issue,” by William J. M. A. Maloney, M.D., captain in the British Army, August 1914-August 1916.

Blake then saw that his original suspicion was correct, and that he had to deal with that most dangerous of all spies, Sinn Fein or any other breed—a pretty girl.

By the time Rugby was passed he had heard the simple life-history in a rural part of England of the girl, ending with the information that she was going to Dublin for three months, and that she was very much in dread after all the dreadful happenings there she had read of in the papers, and she had never been in Ireland before (all this in a very fine rich Dublin brogue). And Blake began to think that he must really possess that most priceless of assets, to look a much bigger fool than you are.

After the stop at Crewe the girl again attacked him about Dublin, asking if he lived in lodgings there, and, if so, was there a room to let in the same house. A few days previously Michael Collins’s flat in a certain Dublin street had been raided with satisfactory results to the raiders, and Blake gave her this address, assuring her that she would here find quarters entirely suitable to her requirements. The girl took the hint, and the rest of the journey to Holyhead was spent in silence.

On the mail-boat Blake saw the girl once more, sitting with a youthful officer of the Dublin garrison, and carrying on an animated conversation with their heads touching.

On arriving at Ballybor Barracks Blake found further orders awaiting him from the County Inspector to proceed at once to Castleport with all the men and cars he could spare.

The wildest rumours were afloat amongst his men: that the I.R.A. were going to take the field openly (this notable achievement was reserved for the Truce); that a large force of Americans had landed from a yacht at Errinane with stacks of arms, and that they were raising and arming the mountain men of that district greatly against their wish and inclination, and that De Valera had been landed on the west coast from a submarine, was hiding in the mountains of Ballyrick, and was at long last going to take the field himself.

Collecting every man he could spare and taking all the transport except one Crossley, Blake set off with a strong convoy of police for Castleport. The men were in great heart, and eagerly looking forward to a good square fight in the open with the hitherto elusive soldiers of the I.R.A.

At Castleport they found the barracks packed with police, drawn in from all the outlying districts; even two large houses adjacent to the barracks had had to be commandeered to hold all the men.

The County Inspector explained the situation, which was quite simple. A large force of I.R.A. flying columns, estimated at over a thousand strong, were reported to have refused to return to the south, and had taken up permanent quarters in the Maryburgh Peninsula, north-west of Errinane, and were playing old puck generally throughout that part of the west. At first these flying columns had been distributed all through the mountains, some in the Ballyrick country, more in the Slievenamoe Mountains, and a large party to the south of Castleport; but owing to the unpleasant attentions of Auxiliary flying columns they had gradually retired towards the Maryburgh Peninsula, where so far they had been left unmolested.

The gunmen on the Slievenamoe Mountains had had a bad fright from the very efficient company of Auxiliaries quartered at Annagh. Father John had done all in his power to get rid of these unwelcome guests in his parish, but showing a fine turn of speed they just managed to escape, actually dashing through Ballybor in the middle of the night in a convoy of commandeered Fords a few days before Blake’s return.

For some time the gunmen had been in the habit of commandeering their rations at night from Castleport, and during these nights the town would be completely isolated. The first intimation of anything being wrong which the townspeople had was the return one night of several white-faced crying girls, who told their parents that they had just by chance met Pat So-and-So, and that he had asked them to go for a stroll, and hardly had they got outside the town when armed men had seized poor Pateen and ordered the girls to go home at once. Incidentally the poor Pateens were kept as a labour platoon by the gunmen, and made to do all the dirty work of digging trenches, breaking down bridges, &c., which occurred during the operations to follow. A different butcher, baker, and grocer would be visited each time, just to show that there was no question of favouritism with the I.R.A.

While this requisitioning was proceeding every road leading into Castleport was held by strong pickets of gunmen, who, as soon as the ration party returned, would make for the Maryburgh Mountains on bicycles, the ration party travelling on a commandeered lorry.

Directly the County Inspector got wind of this proceeding, he made an attempt to surprise the gunmen one night, but their local information was too good, and he failed. Then, hearing that this big muster of gunmen was hiding in the Maryburgh Peninsula, he collected all the forces he could, and prepared to kill, capture, or drive them into the Atlantic.

Soon after Blake’s arrival at Castleport, apparently reliable information came in that a landing of arms had been carried out early that morning at Errinane, and that these arms were to be taken as soon as it was dark to the Maryburgh Peninsula. The County Inspector at once detailed Blake and Black, the Castleport D.I., to take a large force of police and attempt to seize the arms before they could be taken out of Errinane.

Errinane lies about twenty-one miles to the south of Castleport, on a narrow inland bay. The road runs the whole way through wild mountainous country, though at no point does the road run very close to the mountains.

On the way out Blake carefully looked out for any points where an ambush might be carried out, and noticed that there were two bad spots: one where the road skirted the edge of a wood with a rocky hill close on the other side; the second, about eight miles from Castleport, where the road twisted through a ravine with steep rocky sides dotted with bushes, and at one place crossed a narrow high bridge—an ideal place for an ambush. Blake was so much impressed with this place that he stopped the cars and made his men search carefully the sides of the ravine, but not a sign of any preparations for an ambush could they find. Nor were there any trenches on the road.

After picketing Errinane, Blake searched every house, shop, store, and barn in the village, but not a sign of arms could be found, nor was any yacht to be seen in the harbour.

It was late when they started back for Castleport, and Blake, who was suspicious of an ambush at the bridge in the ravine, which was the nearest point on the road to the Maryburgh country, ordered Black to go ahead with two Crossleys, and to search the ravine thoroughly, and then to wait until the rest of the force caught him up.

Blake’s party was delayed by two punctures, and when they got near to the ravine heavy firing suddenly broke out ahead of them. When within half a mile of the bridge, they saw a party of men running away from a culvert in a dip of the road ahead of them.

Luckily, Blake was in the leading car, and ordered the driver to pull up about a hundred yards short of the culvert, which, sure enough, went up before they had been waiting two minutes.

The firing ahead had now grown heavier, and every now and then the dull thud of a bursting Mills bomb could be heard above the racket of musketry. Realising that Black must be hard pressed, Blake divided his force into two, ordered each party to deploy on one side of the road and attempt to outflank the ravines.

When within three hundred yards of the bridge both parties came under heavy enfilade machine-gun fire—machine-guns which made a noise none had ever heard before, and were probably American Thompson guns,—and they were forced to take the best cover they could find in the open bog.

The machine-gun fire at once died down, only to break out again every time the police attempted to advance by short rushes. By painful degrees they managed to get within eighty yards of the bridge, where the formation of the ground protected them from that horrible enfilade hail of bullets, and gathering themselves together they charged at the reverse slope of the ravine.

At once the firing ceased, and when at last they had torn their way through briars and gorse to reach the top, all that they found was small piles of empty cartridges and two ordinary tweed caps—not a sign of a gunman whichever way they looked.

They then turned their attention to their comrades on the road, and here a heartrending sight met their eyes. At first it appeared as though all the occupants of the two cars were either dead or wounded, but as they descended towards the bridge a small party of police crawled from underneath it, soaked to the skin. They found Black lying against the front wheel of the leading car with four bullet wounds in his body and his head smashed in by a dum-dum bullet—stone-dead.

Blake found out from the survivors that Black had disregarded his orders, and had not pulled up until the cars had passed the bridge, when a hail of bullets swept the cars from the top of both banks of the ravine. Black was wounded by the first volley, was hit twice while getting out of the car to lead his men to the attack, and in the head as his foot touched the ground.

The sun had by now gone down, and collecting all his wounded and dead, Blake pushed off for Castleport as fast as he could.

Beyond a blown-up culvert half a mile from the ravine, which the cars crossed without difficulty on their own planks, they met with no further trouble.

Then followed three feverish days of planning and preparing for the great drive, which it was hoped would put a thousand gunmen out of action for good and all; unless indeed a new Chief Secretary should come to Ireland, perhaps this time from Australia or possibly from India, or even a Jew, who would celebrate his arrival in this unfortunate country by opening wide the gates of the internment camps.

The area to be driven was roughly three hundred and sixty square miles, which will give some idea of the magnitude of the task which a handful of police had to tackle with the aid of a battalion of infantry and a company of Auxiliaries. And when it is added that the entire peninsula consisted of mountains (five of them well over two thousand feet, and unclimbable in many places), bogs, lakes, and rivers, with only one decent road which ran _round the coast and at the base_, it will be granted that the task was nearly an impossible one.

Also the few scattered inhabitants would be certain to be found to act as unwilling scouts for the gunmen. Moreover, once the weather turned wet, which may happen in the course of a few hours on the west coast, a thick mist would cover the mountains, and all the gunmen had to do then was to walk out of the trap and make their way inland.

The plan of attack was as follows. The Castleport-Errinane road crossed the twenty-mile neck of the peninsula, and before dawn one day ten columns, each of eighty men, formed up a mile apart.

As soon as it was light enough to see, these columns started, marching in columns of route for the first two miles; they then deployed into open order, got in touch with each other, and then started to drive the country out of face for the remaining eighteen miles. Frequently the line had to halt while a column would hunt a mountain in its line of advance, or a detour round a lake had to be made.

For the first four miles there was no sign of the gunmen—the column only met flocks of mountain sheep, and no sign of a human being; but, when ten miles from the west end of the peninsula, the troops on both flanks came under fire—evidently an attempt to stop them working round behind the gunmen.

The troops in the centre now tried to advance, but were also held up by heavy fire before they had gone half a mile; but at their third attempt the flanks met with no opposition, and the whole line was able to continue the advance. From now on the gunmen offered a determined resistance at every ridge, but always retired before their positions could be turned.

At last, close on nightfall, the Crown forces came to the strongest position of all—a long ridge in the centre with small hills at each end, extending to the north and south coasts of the peninsula.

As there was no time left for a turning movement, a direct assault was tried, only to fail twice. It was then decided to wait until the full moon had risen, when it would be possible to make a turning movement along the coast.

Unfortunately the sky became cloudy, and during the whole night the Crown forces were unable to move; but as soon as the daylight came another assault met with no opposition.

Once on top of the ridge they could see the remainder of the peninsula to the west coast, and not a sign of a gunman anywhere; nor when they searched every valley and even some sand-hills on the coast could they find so much as a single gunman.

The following day word was brought into the barracks at Castleport that a column of gunmen, thousands strong, had been seen marching in column of route into the Ballyrick Mountains from the coast; but how they could have got there from the Maryburgh Peninsula did not transpire for some time.

Later it was learnt that when the Crown forces gave up the attack on the final ridge to wait for the moon, the gunmen waited until it was dark, when they made their way to the coast. Here they had collected every fishing-boat to be found. The sea being calm, the whole force managed during the night to cross the bay to the north, a distance of fifteen miles, landed on the Ballyrick coast soon after dawn, and at once set off for the Ballyrick Mountains.

XX.
THE GREAT ROUND UP.

At the beginning of the Irish war, when the I.R.A., to use its own words, “took the field against the British Army,” its activities were purely local and sporadic. Some unfortunate police patrols of half a dozen men, often less, walking along the King’s highway, interfering with none except evil-doers, would be suddenly fired at with shot-guns, sometimes loaded with jagged slugs and pieces of metal, from a safe cover behind a stone wall with carefully-prepared loopholes.

These police patrols never had a dog’s chance, and should have been discontinued long before they actually were.

At first the murderers did not trouble to make sure that they had a perfectly safe line of retreat behind them when the location of these cowardly ambushes was chosen, but after a few failures they made no mistake in future, the line of retreat, either through a thick wood or down the reverse slope of a hill, being always the first consideration.

Married police living in houses or rooms in the town of their station afforded an easy and safe target for the venom of these hooligan shop-boys and farmers’ sons. At first the police used to go home unarmed, and used to be shot down in the back while passing along an ill-lighted street or lane, or the assassins would knock at the door of the policeman’s home, and if he came to the door would fire at him and then run away.

Occasionally, in districts where the standard of bravery was very high, all the Volunteers would collect in a small town after dark—always after dark—and carry out an attack on the local police barracks. They knew perfectly well that it was impossible for the police to leave their barracks owing to the smallness of their numbers, and that as long as they kept well under cover (which they did) they were just as safe as they would be in their own beds at home.

These so-called attacks on police barracks simply consisted in gangs of hooligans first taking careful cover in houses adjacent to the barracks, and then firing off as many rounds as they possessed. They always ceased fire long before daybreak, in order that they might be home in good time before it was possible for the police to leave barracks or a relief party to arrive on the scene.

At this period of the war, raiding the houses of the Loyalists for arms, and incidentally for money and valuables, not forgetting drink, was a much safer and more remunerative night’s amusement than shooting policemen or attacking barracks, though the price then was £60 for every policeman murdered.

A party of twenty to thirty Volunteers, usually boys from fifteen to twenty years of age, would meet at a fixed rendezvous some time after dark with all the arms they could raise. They would then don black cloth masks, turn up their coat collars, pull their hats down, and sally forth to spend the night robbing, murdering, and terrorising the unfortunate Loyalists of the district.

Imagine the feelings of a respectable old man living in a lonely house, who had probably never harmed any one during his lifetime, and whose only crime consisted in being loyal or refusing to subscribe to the funds of the I.R.A., in many cases a form of common robbery.

Night after night he lies in bed expecting to hear a loud knock at the door, and at last it comes. He opens the door to find a dozen shot-guns, old rifles, and pistols pointed at him. Some brute then demands his arms; the old man says he has none. They push him aside and force their way in. The old man is made to sit down while two young hounds keep prodding him in the back of the neck with the muzzles of their pistols, to remind him what they could do if they liked. The remainder ransack the house from top to bottom, take away any money or valuables they can find, and consume any drink there may be. If they cannot find any money or valuables, they threaten him with death until he disgorges. And lonely women suffered in like fashion.

The demand for arms used to be merely a blind for committing robbery. The location of every firearm in a district was well known from the beginning of the war.

If the reader happens to be an English country gentleman, let him think what it would be like never to know the night or hour when he would be raided by a gang of farm labourers or village loafers, armed and masked, from the nearest village. He might retire to bed to be waked up by loud knocking on his front door. If he did not open quickly a rifle shot would be fired through the lock, and if the door did not open then, it quickly would to the blows of hatchets which would follow. A wild gang of drunken brutes would burst into his nice house, smash desks, sideboards, and cupboards, searching for loot. Lucky man if he escaped with the loss of arms, money, and valuables, and not of home and life as well.

If the reader is an ex-soldier, let him imagine what his feelings would be like if in the middle of the night he was pulled out of his bed by these same ruffians, and given his choice between joining Trotsky’s Own Light Infantry, or whatever the local Red force may call itself, or being shot out of face. Being true to his country, he refuses to have anything to do with Bolshevism, and is shot before the eyes of his agonised wife.

Remember that the loyal country gentlemen and ex-soldiers of Ireland have sacrificed their blood and treasure on the altar of Empire as well as their English cousins, and hence are entitled to as much protection.

But no, when it comes to a matter of politics and votes they are thrown to the wolves, to the eternal shame of England. The sacrifice of the southern Loyalists will form one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of England.

Robberies on a more extensive scale followed: bank managers taking large sums of money to out-of-the-way villages on the occasion of a fair, in order to facilitate payments by buyers to farmers, were held up and robbed. Mail-cars carrying pension money for the old and poor were held up and robbed; likewise post offices, banks, railway stations, and large shops—and most of this money used to forward the cause of armed rebellion. In fact, the Government were largely being fought with their own money, or, rather, that of the helpless British taxpayer.

But this form of warfare, though most unpleasant for the unfortunate Irish Loyalist, and probably disturbing to the few people in England who knew anything about what was happening in Ireland, would never have led to anything provided the British Government had taken the necessary steps quickly to preserve law and order and punish evil-doers. But no, as ever in Ireland, they would do nothing, except procrastinate, until it was too late.

Instead of strengthening the R.I.C. and sending more troops into the country, they merely evacuated outlying police barracks, which were promptly burnt amidst scenes of triumph by the local Volunteers, and hailed by all rebels as the first outward sign of the retreat of the English from Ireland.

If the police released by the evacuation of these barracks had been used to form flying columns to quiet the worst districts, there might have been some sense in this manœuvre; unfortunately, the men were all wanted to make up the wastage in the occupied barracks caused by the large number of resignations of young constables in the R.I.C. at this time.

Looking back, these constables who resigned appear to have been mean deserters of their comrades, but after-events have to a certain degree justified their action. They were certain that, no matter how often the British Government swore to see its loyal servants through, in the end it would let them down, and the pity is that they were right. True, there was a day when an Englishman’s word was as good as his bond, but that day appears to be quite out of date. Or perhaps it does not apply to politicians!

Doubtless greatly surprised at their initial success, the chiefs of the I.R.A. now determined on a much more ambitious form of warfare—namely, the formation of flying columns to harry and murder the Crown forces throughout Ireland, not excepting Ulster; at the same time they started a tremendous campaign of propaganda in England and the States.

The idea of breaking up the British Empire by means of a number of small flying columns of corner-boys in Ireland, and green pamphlets at John Bull’s breakfast-table, appears laughable; but Sinn Fein has shown itself a wonderfully astute judge of the mentality of the present-day politician in England.

The summer of 1920 saw the greater part of the south and west in the hands of the Republic, who not only boasted an army in the field, but ran their own police, law-courts, and Local Government Board. It was not an uncommon occurrence for a man to be first arrested by the R.I.C. for some offence, and then by the I.R.A.; sometimes there used to be quite an exciting race between these two forces to see who could catch the culprit first.

The first flying columns were made up of determined and hard-up corner-boys collected from every district in the south and west, and were sent out under specially qualified leaders to murder as many police and soldiers as they could, no matter whether they were armed or unarmed, asleep or awake. The price for the murder of a policeman rose gradually to £60, and eventually to £100.

With a terrorised population and a Government which refused to function, these columns had everything in their favour, and carried on their campaign of murder and assassination practically unhindered at first.

Their chief channels of information were the post-office and young girls. The larger proportion of post-office officials were openly disloyal, postmasters even being caught red-handed decoding important police and military wires for the information of the I.R.A. And young girls not only obtained information by walking out with policemen and soldiers, but also carried the gunmen’s arms to and from a murder or ambush.