“Afterwards, it was stated, a bloodhound was employed in a search for Tobin, and a pool of blood was found on the mountain where the wounded man had evidently rested. On Sunday morning his dead body was found within a hundred yards of his mother’s house, whither he had evidently crawled from some place of hiding during the night. He had his coat under his head, and had evidently lain down to die.”
Tragic to read? Yes. Regrettable to read? Yes. But the Crown Forces were victims of circumstances no less than were the Irish Volunteers. The trouble began by Britain refusing to concede certain Irish claims; this led to outrage, and outrage to reprisals, and reprisals to a state of civil war. The reprisals were carried out to intimidate (and to a certain extent the reprisals did justify themselves), to satisfy thwarted effort, out of contempt. I have spoken to several Auxiliary Police, humane men, men who had taken part in the European War, and not one of them spoke of the Sinn Feiner as an enemy and an equal, as he might have spoken of a Frenchman or a German. If it were suggested the reprisals were unworthy, the answer would be, “Good enough for them, the swine!”
Yet the Irish Volunteer believed himself to be serving an ideal. I quote an extract from General Lawson’s report, dated December 30th.
“The captains ... appear to have been ... as a class, transparently sincere and single-minded, idealists, highly religious for the most part, and often with an almost religious sense of their duty to their country.... They fought against drunkenness and self-indulgence, and it is no exaggeration to say that as a class they represented all that was best in the countryside.... They and their volunteers were trained to discipline, they imbibed the military spirit, and then as now they looked upon their army as one in a very real sense, an organisation demanding implicit obedience and self-abnegation from rank to rank.... They stood for much that is best in human nature.... There is a spirit of a nation behind the organisation ... sympathising with and believing that those who belong to the I.R.A. are fighting for the cause of the Irish people.”
The Irish Volunteers, lacking numbers and equipment, were forced to conduct the fight by any method they could, and the Crown Forces, if they were to get in a blow at all, had frequently to get down on hands and knees, and meet the enemy on their own level. Such are the humours of life.
Surely the gods must laugh as they watch, or, indeed, are they wiser than man believes, and order these complex events that he, weary of reading from the old lesson book, may have his attention caught by old truths put in a new way, and learn again the lessons of fortitude and restraint.
January came to an end, February came to an end, and the disastrous tale of deeds continued; but the days were getting longer, and the cold was going out of the air, and a man felt when the sun came back again, peace also might return.
CHAPTER XVI
THE MINISTER OF PROPAGANDA
One March morning Mrs. Slaney rapped at the door. Himself was out. I put down my pen with a sigh.