CHAPTER XI
AFTERMATH
The officers met their ends in their beds, in their baths, at shaving. One and all were shot in cold blood, and, extraordinary to relate, no defence seems to have been made. In every case the victim was taken unawares. This veritable Slaughter of the Innocents could only have occurred to such a race as the British. These officers, on a par with their behaviour in the hotels, went to bed in an enemy country with unlocked doors and locked-up guns. That supreme British contempt for the enemy—at once the making and the undoing of Britain—limited the imagination of these people to such an extent that though they were engaged upon what is allowed to be most dangerous work, they could not conceive calamity falling upon themselves.
Some time afterwards I spoke to a Dutchman, and he held up his hands and cried, “Here am I who would not go into a strange house without making inquiries and locking my door; and these men come into an enemy country and go openly about their work; and at night lock up their guns and go to sleep with the door open. Ach!”
The Sunday death roll in no way represents the magnitude of the plan. There were several escapes—people were not at home, wives tricked the raiders; but more far-reaching than these things was the fact that there seems to have been a serious miscarriage in the Sinn Fein plans. One story goes to relate that a list of eighty victims was prepared, and a number of Irish Volunteers gathered on Baggot Street Bridge, or one of those bridges over the canal, waiting for guides who did not turn up.
The men detailed to carry out the work of assassination took no more risk than was essential to the undertaking. In every case they called in overwhelming numbers on their victims.
The task was not glorious; but when one examines the circumstances, what other means had Sinn Fein of getting rid of such dangerous enemies? Man for man, an agent of the secret service should greatly exceed the value of a soldier. His power lies in his secrecy.
The penalty of secrecy has always been death. An agent knows this, and is reconciled to the law. It is just enough. But the men who carried out the work of assassination wore no uniform, they too worked under a civilian cloak. The pot came to destroy the kettle.
It was now towards the end of November, and getting dusk soon after the middle of the afternoon.
There were long damp depressing evenings and interminable nights. That extraordinary terror, which had been coming in puffs, was at last sweeping through Ireland like a wind.
It is curious what one recalls looking back over a troubled time. It is an atmosphere rather than events. There come back to me those early darkening afternoons when people passed sullenly with bent heads, and the paper-boys raced through the mire, bearing their printed aprons which told of fresh ruin. I remember meeting on successive days three carts fallen over on their sides because a wheel had run away.