The Minister of Commerce, passing from place to place like any Ishmaelite, issued his edicts that such and such British goods should be boycotted, and the unwilling shopkeepers dared not disobey.
The Minister of Propaganda, pedalling, pedalling his ubiquitous bicycle, interviewed foreign journalists, got together his facts for the day’s issue of the Irish Bulletin, all the while thanking the dark for its cloak, thanking the cold for an excuse to muffle up.
So the work of the Departments was done, nor was it probable that it would be undone, for man thrives on difficulty. The danger to this national awakening was not then, it was going to be later on in the easy days of peace.
The old year came to an end, and the first day of the new year brought Sinn Fein Ireland a happy augury. It went from mouth to mouth that President De Valera had returned from America. Everywhere the question was put, “Is he come?” “Where has he landed?”
47, whom I ran across about this time, told me he received reliable information of the President’s whereabouts within a few hours of the landing, and he had passed on the news to Headquarters. It was decided that no steps should be taken to arrest the President, and henceforward to the truce in June, the difficulty for the agents of the Crown was to avoid coming in contact with him.
This was not the story told by Sinn Fein, who made it known that the astute President, aided by the Republican secret service, was making ridiculous the clumsy efforts of the Crown Forces to capture him, and patriots chuckled over their teacups. The awakening was a rude one. Auxiliary police, raiding the grounds of a house in the Blackrock district, found digging potatoes a mysterious person with side whiskers, who was possessed of important papers. He was escorted to the nearest barracks, where it transpired he was no less a man than the President of the Irish Republic. He received an apology and was released.
The patriots of the teatables were thunderstruck, and more insulted than if their President had been maltreated. Some there were who received a shock from which they never recovered.
It was in these dark days my wife and I first made acquaintance with A. E., first saw presiding over a circle interested in mysticism and the occult this benevolent and rather giant person, wrapped up in an ancient greatcoat, and all crowded into a chair. There was not a wrinkle to speak of in his face, as if a serene mind had allowed him to pass trouble by, and through his spectacles looked out eyes as blue as the sky.
On the wall were two pictures by his hand of visions he had seen in some uncommon hour. For this man, who is gaining an international reputation, was many-sided, and each side exceeded the stature of an average man.
He was a painter of some ability, and better than his painting was his poetry, and better than his poetry was his prose, and better than his prose were his ideas; and more astonishing than his ideas was the facility for expressing them. He seemed informed on half the subjects in the world, and a question would start the stream of eloquence flowing. Never was there such an example of rich payment received from trained concentration and years of clear thinking.