Thus it was the British Government could get no support in Ireland.
The following illustrates the condition of affairs.
A stone flew through a Dublin shop window, and the shopkeeper came running out and demanded what the stone thrower meant. The man retorted he had thrown the stone because he felt like it, that he was a Sinn Feiner, and he defied the shopkeeper to touch him. He demanded for his services a cigarette, which he was given. A policeman on point duty was close by, a crowd was looking on, and nobody moved in the matter. The shopkeeper returned to his shop. The stone thrower was unlikely to have been an Irish Volunteer, probably he was a hooligan; but the announcement was sufficient to place everybody under a spell.
As matters went from bad to worse the British Government found it necessary to supplement the troops in the country, and an auxiliary body of police was recruited to reinforce the country police, who were dotted about in isolated barracks. The recruits, many of whom were Irishmen and ex-service men, wore black uniforms and tan bandoliers and so earned the name of Black-and-Tans. They were armed with rifles, they rode in lorries, and they swept about the roads at breakneck speed.
In addition to the Black-and-Tans, the Government recruited a second auxiliary police force, which came to be known as the Auxiliary Cadets. The recruits were all ex-officers and wore a most dashing uniform, which culminated in a Balmoral bonnet perched at a jaunty angle. These people were also armed with rifles, and rode in lorries. They were more in evidence in the cities than the Black-and-Tans.
These reinforcements were to assist the search for active members of the I.R.A. and to raid suspected houses for arms and documents. But before you can arrest your man it is necessary to know his whereabouts and if he be guilty or not. This work could not be undertaken by such military and police forces as were in commission, and the British Government met the situation by extending the operations of the secret service. The Sinn Fein organisation was one gigantic secret service, and only another secret service could cope with it.
This strange situation of an immensely powerful man fighting the shadow of a man continued. Justice was ready with the prison and the hangman; but there was no murderer for the scaffold. But the secret service was bringing in all the time little bits of information—that Paddy Murphy was responsible for this, that Denny Burke had done that. It was useless to arrest Paddy or Denny as there was no concrete proof, for no witness would come forward because of intimidation or out of sympathy, and until the courts martial sat, should a man be brought to trial, no civil jury would convict for like reasons.
The police were scattered through the countryside in isolated barracks. In course of time these barracks were roughly fortified with barbed wire and sandbags. In the undisturbed districts as often as not the police found themselves cut off from social amenities through the villagers regarding them with suspicion and fearing to hold communication with them lest they fell under suspicion of being sympathisers and informers. The police waited month after month, never venturing far from barracks, in a state of siege by an invisible enemy.
In the disturbed areas the life of the Crown forces was unbearable. Not a man, woman, or child but had been taught to look on them with contempt and hatred. They found themselves picked off as opportunity availed, and they were powerless to say whose hand had pulled the trigger, though probably every villager knew, and knew the road the gunman had taken.
They were out in all weathers patrolling the roads and scouring the country for the phantom army, which never materialised, though it left frequent marks of its presence in trenches dug at the turn of roads, in trees felled across the path, and in walls torn down for an obstruction. Indeed, at any hour, at any favourable spot, it might materialise, round a sudden corner, over the shoulder of a hill, from some wooded height above the road. A volley of shots would pour down, and the gunmen would make away across country, of which they knew every inch of ground. The nerves of the police must have been stretched to the breaking point during those patrols, so that hate was breeding in them like maggots in meat.