Several landlords who employed a good many men were threatened that, if they did not pay a higher wage than the maximum laid down by law, all their men would be called out and that they would in addition be boycotted. And any who refused at once had their hayricks burnt and their cattle injured.
Rumours came to Blake’s ears of a man making extraordinary speeches at night in the different country school-houses throughout the district to audiences of young men and girls, speeches which apparently combined Sinn Fein aims with red revolution.
During 1920 Sergeant M’Grath had been sent to Grouse Lodge as sergeant-in-charge, and thinking that he recognised O’Kelly in the revolutionary lecturer who was touring the district, he kept a careful watch on the Cloonalla school-house, and within a week had surprised and captured the man, who turned out to be O’Kelly.
O’Kelly was brought up before the R.M. in Ballybor Barracks, charged with inciting the people to murder the police during the strike of 1919, and pleaded not guilty.
The R.M., who looked upon the man as a harmless lunatic (he had not heard him haranguing a crowd), offered to let him go provided he entered into a recognisance to be of good behaviour and could find two sureties in fairly substantial sums. O’Kelly replied that he dared not enter into a recognisance to be of good behaviour, and further, that if he was released he would continue to preach revolution. Whereupon the R.M. gave him three months and left the barracks.
Blake then saw O’Kelly alone, and endeavoured to find out who and what he was. It was obvious that the man was not an Irishman, nor did he appear to be English. O’Kelly refused to give him any information regarding himself.
While this interview was going on an Auxiliary, whose home was in Scotland, and who commanded a section of Cadets on temporary duty in Ballybor, looked in to see Blake and found him with O’Kelly.
After O’Kelly had left the room the Auxiliary told Blake that he knew the man well, and had often seen him in Glasgow, where, previous to 1919, the man had lived for two years working as a Jewish Bolshevik agent, and that he had suddenly disappeared from Glasgow when the police began to get unpleasantly attentive.
XIX.
MOUNTAIN WARFARE.
The movements of the flying columns of the I.R.A.—gangs of armed ruffians, usually numbering about forty, but sometimes more, sometimes less, and led by men with military experience (ex-soldiers and even ex-officers, to their everlasting shame)—have always corresponded accurately to the amount of police and military pressure brought to bear on them, which pressure has continually fluctuated in agreement to the whims and brain-waves of the politicians in power.