“I have something to say,” she said. “I hope you won’t be influenced by what you hear over here. When I see strangers like you I am always so afraid of what will happen to them. The Irish are such good pleaders. But it’s all lamentable. I am as Irish as anybody; but I wish this was over, with all my heart I wish it. It’s not a clean war. It’s having a frightful effect on the young men. Kill, kill, kill is all they think of now, it’s all they talk of, and what will they have at the end of their lives, what battles can they fight over again? I can’t sleep at night, I hear them talking as old men. ‘I got him in his bath,’ one will say. Another, ‘I got him in bed.’ And another, ‘He was visiting his wife. I shot him at tea.’ They have dirtied Ireland’s name, say what they will, they have done that. Doesn’t the most sympathetic American squirm when you compare this to the American War of Independence? I think so. I read the other day of the Poles objecting to the comparison with the Polish struggle for freedom. People who hate England pretend to sympathise with us for their own ends; but there is not a nation that, at heart, does not hold our methods in contempt. We are called ditch murderers, and the expression is justified.”
Her face was working with emotion. We had come to a corner. She said good night and was gone.
CHAPTER XV
HEIGHT OF THE TERROR
Passing from bad to worse, the year drew to an end.
As if the fury of those days were breeding them and putting them upon the streets, the shaking lorries increased in number; and the flying Crossley tenders swept by in the hunt—hunting, hunting, hunting for the elusive foe, which was everywhere and nowhere—which was on the pavements, which was behind the counters of the shops, which was wrapped in the uniforms of tram conductor, of railway porter, of postman, which made use of any refuge that it might help the infant Republic to take a place among the nations.
Terrible tales were whispered in those final weeks of the dying year. Tales of frenzied men hunted by bloodhounds. Tales of pitiless ambushes, of police slaughtered to a man, and the bodies hacked to pieces with axes. Tales of savage reprisal following on shameful deed, of burned shops, of deserted farms, of peasants gone to couch with fox and hare. Tales of new proclamations and new restrictions falling alike on guilty and innocent.
“Auxiliary Division, R.I.C., the Castle, Macroom.”
“Whereas foul murders of servants of the Crown have been carried out by disaffected persons, and whereas such persons immediately before the said murders appeared to be peaceful and loyal people, but have produced pistols from their pockets; it is hereby ordered that all male inhabitants of Macroom, and all males passing through Macroom, shall not appear in public with their hands in their pockets. Any male infringing this order is liable to be shot at sight.”
Tales of bridges destroyed in the country places to impede the movement of Government troops, and other bridges leading to the market towns blown up as reprisal by forces of the Crown. Tales of gross murder of isolated police replied to by tales of blindfolded prisoners taken at dead of night to lonely places and there told they were to die, made to kneel praying and listen while a grave was dug, and this play-acting done, the victim promised life if he would say was his neighbour, the butcher, a peaceful citizen or a follower of Sinn Fein, did his friend, the bootmaker, who so amiably dusted his shop of a morning also in the dark of night dust a gun which came up from under the boards. And could the kneeling man rise to meet this fierce hour and refuse the information, his thwarted captors returned him to his cell.