One of these escorts I met coming up Grafton Street, and two moving parallel with Stephen’s Green. The men walked in pairs, their hands in their pockets on their guns and their bombs. In the crowd each pair kept a few yards apart, when the streets were empty they increased the distance, to lose the appearance of a military formation. But the man who knew what to look for could still pick them up. How was it these escorts could move about unchallenged in the face of troops, and police, and spies?
In the first place, most of the Sinn Fein leaders were not known by sight to the Government agents. This, more than any other reason, gave them immunity during those final two years. Secondly, these men, with their armed escort, only appeared abroad on rare occasions, for a few minutes, perhaps, when they left one meeting-place to reach another. The ordinary Dublin Metropolitan policeman, who might recognise them, was of no more consideration than a lamp-post. If necessary, he would have waved the traffic back while they marched across the road.
There was more danger from some Government agent, swimming up and down in the crowd like a predatory fish; but a solitary man could not arrest twelve men, and he could do no more than shadow them to their destination, and then was the difficulty of getting back to Dublin Castle with the news. The telephone exchanges were full of Sinn Fein spies who would give warning.
In the course of their travels these escorts would be passed by constant flying lorries, choked with Auxiliary police. A Government man, theoretically, could call upon these people for assistance; but he himself was much more likely to meet his end than the men he was shadowing. The Auxiliaries always travelled at breakneck speed, sweeping round corners like a train. The slower the pace, the better the target they made for ambushers. The only way our man could have halted them would be by walking into the middle of the road and holding up a hand. The Auxiliaries would not have pulled up; but, with one accord, believing he was about to hurl a bomb, they would have arisen and shot him to bits.
The Sinn Fein escort would have gone on its way rejoicing.
Occasionally, these wanted men went about without escorts, trusting in fate. In such cases they would be unarmed, for occasionally pedestrians were searched for arms. There were always rumours that in this street or that street some well-known man had been seen cycling along, perhaps Michael Collins (Minister of Finance), Richard Mulcahy (Chief of Staff), or Charles Burgess (Minister of Defence), the three most wanted men in the land—men whom fate and a Celtic renaissance had placed astride a bicycle and set higher than a king.
Time and again military and police united in their efforts to get hold of the Republican leaders; but generally without result. Extraordinary precautions were taken for their safety. If a meeting was to be held in a certain house, the streets would be picketed for a great distance round by peaceful citizens leaning smoking against doorposts, and other worthy townspeople propped up against lamp-posts, spitting. Not a fly could have got through the final cordon without the agreed-on signs and passwords. 47 told me once it was necessary to produce a tram ticket of a certain value, dated the previous day, and folded in a certain fashion. It was said on occasions street musicians were posted with orders to play certain tunes in certain events. Many of these stories were true, some legendary, no doubt. 47 was an instructor who taught me well, and tramping Dublin streets, I saw much that was not given to ordinary passers to see, and was told much that must not be repeated.
In the midst of this strange time, while the new movement was aiming to push Ireland into the van of progressive nations, there occurred one of those mediæval happenings which only take place to-day in Ireland, of all parts of the British Isles.
The statues of Templemore began to bleed.
The story goes that on a Friday evening statues of the Blessed Virgin, the Crucifixion, the Blessed Virgin with the child Jesus, and St. Joseph with the Holy Child, belonging to a newsagent at Templemore, began to ooze blood from heart and mouth. At the same time the statues in a nephew’s house also started to ooze blood, and the nephew, a young man of nineteen, had a vision of the Blessed Virgin. The Blessed Virgin ordered the young man to make a depression in the floor of his room, and immediately after there was a miraculous flow of water.