Rebels Page 13

  ‘I reckon,’ he said, ‘you’ve snatched Connolly. I warn you I can’t keep the Citizen Army back much longer.’

  ‘And what,’ Kent said sarcastically, ‘would your little lot achieve?’

  ‘Die, my friend, to our eternal glory and your shame.’

  Pearse said warmly, ‘By God, you’re right about that.’ He held out his hand and Mallin clasped it. ‘Take my word,’ Pearse said, in that hypnotic voice of his, ‘Connolly is not under duress and he will be back soon.’

  At the safe house, Connolly was slowly, painfully, exhaustingly, getting the proof he needed.

  He began to contribute more and more. The Citizen Army could at least subdue the Castle, pin them down. And why not occupy Stephen’s Green? With all its important approach roads, it was well placed to prevent the movement of Crown forces to the GPO.

  As the hours passed in feverish discussion, Pearse noted with satisfaction his vocabulary change from what you to what we are going to do. They did not even know what day of the week it was when, finally, Connolly grabbed Pearse’s hand and said hoarsely, ‘God grant, Pearse, that you’re right!’

  Pearse, equally shattered, whispered, ‘I hope so, too.’

  *

  On 22 January, before breakfast, Connolly reappeared at the Countess’s place, Surrey House in Rathmines. He had been promised a regular update on the rising. Having been sworn to secrecy, he refused even to say where he had been.

  The Countess said, ‘From now on, you are going to have a bodyguard, old chum, like it or not.’ She handed him a whistle. ‘Just blow on that and the lads will come running.’

  He put it to his lips but only a chick-like peep came out.

  She helped him upstairs.

  ‘I feel I’ve just walked forty miles,’ he said, as she heaved him on to his bed.

  By the time she took off his shoes, he was asleep.

  Pearse, his right leg twitching as it always did when he lied or dissembled, was telling MacNeill that he had won Connolly over. He had solemnly promised to talk no more nonsense about taking on the British on his own.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ MacNeill said.

  Lord Wimborne, into his fourth month of recruiting in Ireland, was not pleased with the results. Ulster was providing more men than the other three provinces together.

  Soirées at his lodge provided His Ex with relaxation. Among the guests were Lady Cynthia Asquith, the Prime Minister’s daughter-in-law, and Churchill’s cousin, Lady Gwendoline, and Nathan, who had acquired the reputation of a famous charmer.

  Birrell, too, was there on one of his periodic visits, looking, as Lady Cynthia thought, like a mellow old Thackeray. He was relaxed and flirting with the ladies. His conversation, centring on royal bastards, was smutty and amusing.

  When Lady Cynthia enquired about his lumbago, he replied, ‘Painful, my dear, but alas not mortal.’ When Wimborne asked him, ‘Would you care to visit a shell factory with me?’ he replied, ‘Sorry, never did have much interest in fossils.’

  During an amateur performance of The Rape of the Lock, Lady Cynthia cut a silver curl from the head of the Chief Secretary of Ireland.

  Once in Ireland, he was reluctant, because of that damned sea, to leave.

  *

  Early in February, the Military Council met with Connolly again in Kent’s house near the Phoenix Park.

  ‘I’m still concerned,’ he said, ‘that MacNeill knows nothing of what you – I mean, we – are up to.’

  Joe Plunkett said, ‘I do have a little scheme to get him on our side.’

  He gave an outline and Connolly smacked his lips. ‘I like it.’

  Afterwards, Clarke said, ‘We promised to tell you the latest developments, Seamus. Well, we’ve sent a courier to New York to inform Uncle of the precise date of the rising.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The twenty-third of April.’

  ‘St George’s Day. That’s one in the eye for the damned English.’ Then Connolly calculated. ‘But … but that’s Easter Sunday.’ A smile lit up his face. ‘Rising,’ he murmured. ‘Resurrection?’

  Those whom MacNeill trusted also met at this time. In his group were Hobson, J. J. O’Connell, and Sean Fitzgibbon.

  ‘I take it,’ MacNeill said, ‘we are all opposed to the idea of an unprovoked rising.’

  They nodded.

  He distributed copies of a memorandum. ‘I have drawn this up because I am completely opposed to the idea that a rising is compulsory just because there is a war on.’

  They all murmured agreement.

  ‘I also object, gentlemen, to the romantic notion of some sort of blood sacrifice for Irish nationality.’

  ‘So do I,’ affirmed Hobson.

  ‘We hold our arms in readiness, naturally, but only for use if there is conscription or we are faced with suppression. Our policy is the same today as when we were formed: when the war ends, with thousands of Volunteers returning from the front, we shall constitute a single well-armed force to claim our right to Home Rule.’

  The group scanned the memorandum.

  ‘You will note, gentlemen, I simply do not believe military failure will bring anything but death and disaster. A rising with no prospect of military success is against my conscience and I will oppose it to the last breath in my body.’

  On 5 February, Devoy was handed a message by a courier, Tommy O’Connor, who was a steward on an Atlantic liner. When it was decoded, he read, with amazement that the Irish could not delay the rising much longer.

  ‘We have decided to begin action on Easter Sunday. We must have your arms and munitions in Limerick between Good Friday and Easter Saturday. We expect German help immediately after beginning action. We might be compelled to begin earlier.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Devoy whistled in delight, presuming that MacNeill was behind the letter. ‘He must be one helluva guy to bring the whole damned crowd out so early.’

  He opened his diary and circled the dates in red. The arms had to be landed between 20 and 22 April.

  Thrilled, he soon met with Dan Cohalan, Joe McGarrity and the other Clan heads at the Old Irish American Club in Philadelphia.

  Cohalan said, ‘We better come clean right here and now and say that our Government will not allow arms for Ireland out of an American port.’

  Devoy had to agree. ‘Nothing for it, then. We’ve gotta rely entirely on Germany. I just hope to God that guy Monteith has the Brigade ready to go.’

  On 10 February, he asked the German Embassy to forward the Irish message to Berlin.

  As usual, he said to the military attaché, von Papen, ‘I’m sure, Captain, that you and your assistant, von Igel, will take care to keep this note far away from prying eyes.’

  ‘It is quite safe with us,’ Papen returned haughtily.

  Trusting no one, Devoy wrote a supplementary letter to Mr W. Pfitzner, Esschenlaan 16, Rotterdam, Holland. He wanted to make doubly sure that the German General Staff knew about the rising and that Irish-Americans were unable to provide munitions. It was up to Germany.

  The message was sent aboard the SS Sommelsdyk.

  On 11 February, Joe Plunkett announced his engagement to Grace Gifford whose sister, Muriel, was married to Thomas MacDonagh.

  Grace, like several of her sisters, was a nationalist and a convert to Catholicism. Whenever the girls entered a gloomy Sinn Fein room, they turned it into a flower-garden. A beautiful, broad-faced girl with a resolute chin, Grace was an artist with a special talent for caricatures.

  They planned a double-wedding on Easter Sunday; Joe’s sister, Geraldine, was marrying Thomas Dillon. Neither of them had any illusions about living happily ever after. Joe would be leaving the wedding reception to take his position in the firing line. That apart, he needed an operation for glandular TB.

  In a poem for his future bride, he wrote:

  And when I leave you, lest my love

  Should seal your spirit’s ark with clay,

  Spread your bright wings, O shining dove �
�

  But my way is the darkest way.

  On 12 February, Sir John Denton Pinkstone-French, British Commander-in-Chief Home Forces, got a note from General Friend, commanding in Ireland. It suggested that trouble was brewing in the Emerald Isle. French decided it was time for a chat with Birrell at the Irish Office.

  After the pleasantries, ‘Give me a run-down, will you?’

  Birrell said, ‘I’m not too concerned with the provinces.’

  The General, straight-backed as befitted a cavalry officer, crossed to the map on the wall. ‘Danger spots?’

  Birrell pointed south, ‘Cork,’ and east, ‘Dublin itself. A lot of labour agitation there back in ’13. Bad for morale.’

  French made as if to brush crumbs off his white moustache. ‘Worrying, you reckon?’

  Birrell smiled. ‘They have neither the arms nor the men. I’m not worried about a rising so much as the cowardly placing of bombs, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The General was putting on his cap, satisfied that the boys in khaki had a grip on things. ‘Keep me posted if the Sinn Feiners get up to any hanky-panky.’

  Joe Plunkett’s sister, Philomena, known as Mimi, was often used by the Military Council as a courier. She arrived in New York to give Devoy more details of the rising.

  He was pleased at the precision of MacNeill’s plans.

  Included was a code for the Germans. ‘Finn’ meant everything was fine. ‘Brann’ meant there were problems.

  Devoy liked that little touch. ‘Brann’ was the legendary name of the Chief of the Fianna’s dog who scented and warned of danger.

  After Papen had evaluated the Irish request for arms and encoded it, the German Ambassador sent telegram No 675 to Berlin on 17 February.

  His covering note to the German Foreign Office said: ‘The Irish leader (Devoy) tells me that revolution begins Ireland Eastersunday stop requests deliver arms between Goodfriday and Eastersaturday Limerick Westcoast Ireland stop protracted waiting impossible comma desire cabled answer whether promise help from Germany. Bernstorff.’

  Room 40 at the Admiralty, now with a vast staff, was currently dealing with a couple of thousand German Fleet signals and wireless communications every day.

  Hall could not believe his luck. The Germans, with remarkable arrogance, were still taking it for granted that their codes were unbreakable.

  Within hours of Bernstorff’s message being sent, Hall found on his desk a note marked ‘Urgent’.

  He read it.

  ‘Good God,’ he said.

  Soon after, Devoy’s letter to Mr Pfitzner was also intercepted. By then, all British agents on the Continent had been told to watch out for the departure of a German arms boat. Destination: Ireland.

  Devoy, with the bit between his teeth, sent off further messages to Berlin via Bernstorff. One long letter to the German General Staff was in English.

  According to Dublin, he said, the British had 30,000 troops, most of them with no experience and little training, as well as 10,000 well-armed RIC.

  The rebel force consisted of 40,000 trained Irish Volunteers. They possessed 10,000 Lee-Enfields with 200 rounds apiece, plus an extra 20,000 inferior rifles.

  They anticipated that 50,000 of Redmond’s Volunteers would join in, as would thousands of untrained civilians.

  Dublin wanted Germany to send rifles, machine-guns, field artillery and a few senior officers.

  Limerick was ideal for the landing. If the rebels took Limerick, all ports from Galway to South Kerry would fall in a few days, and isolated detachments of British troops would be easily rounded up. Dublin would be dislocated and British power in Ireland would lose its cohesion.

  The Germans would have the benefit of submarine bases on the west coast. Heavy guns hauled up the Kerry mountains would enable them to keep British warships away from Valentia Island with its wireless station.

  The rebels hoped for 100,000 rifles. They would have no trouble finding three times that number of men to use them.

  Finally, Devoy, through the German Ambassador, got his dig in at Casement whose every letter lost him a night’s sleep:

  Americans respectfully request that Sir Roger Casement remain in Germany as Ireland’s accredited Representative until such time as the Provisional government may decide otherwise. (Signed) Graf Bernstorff.

  Casement, then in a Munich sanatorium, was determined not to stay in Germany. With an imagination as excited as Devoy’s, he drafted a letter to the Admiral Staff.

  Still not knowing the precise date of the rising, he proposed that he should leave Germany for Ireland on, say, 18 March by submarine. He would land around Dublin with details of the German navy’s part in the rising. He would link up with the Dublin Supreme Command and arrange in detail the landing and distribution of arms. A courier would bring Dublin’s final plans to a U-boat waiting at an agreed point.

  While Casement was working on this, the German General Staff received Bernstorff’s radio telegram, No 675, dated 17 February. Now that the rising had a definite date, they once more urged the Admiral Staff to tell them, if submarines were out of the question, how to send arms to Ireland.

  In one of several changes of mind, the Military Council switched back the site of the arms landing from Limerick to Fenit Harbour, Tralee, and informed Berlin.

  On 23 February, Pearse visited the Tralee Volunteers. In a private session attended by Austin Stack and the Chaplain, Father Joe Breen, he repeatedly said something that would have alarmed John Devoy, who had told the Germans of a landing between Good Friday and Easter Saturday.

  ‘We expect the arms on the night of Easter Sunday/Easter Monday. Not before, or else the British would be forewarned of the rising.’

  This had not been conveyed to Berlin.

  ‘Make sure,’ Pearse went on, ‘that trains are ready to transport the arms to surrounding Volunteers forces and the RIC are confined to their British Barracks.’

  He spoke the next words with special emphasis.

  ‘Remember, the rising begins in Dublin at 6.30 p.m. on Easter Sunday, so no disturbances before then.’

  Afterwards, Stack went over all the details with Father Breen, with special emphasis on the landing of arms in the night of Easter Sunday/Monday.

  In New York, Devoy took a call from McGarrity.

  ‘How’s things, John?’

  ‘Still no word from Berlin.’

  ‘Will they have time to land those arms between 20–23 April?’

  ‘God knows, Joe. If they don’t arrive, I dunno how MacNeill’s gonna cope.’

  The entire German General Staff laughed when they received Devoy’s request for artillery and men. They might spare some rifles and maybe a few machine-guns but that was their limit.

  On 28 February, the Admiralty told them the best way to get arms to Ireland was by means of two or three trawlers, preferably manned by Irish PoWs with naval experience and knowledge of Irish waters.

  ‘An investigation as to how many rifles, machine-guns and 3.7 cm cannons can be stowed away in a trawler has been ordered to be carried out here.’

  Within days, their North Sea Station reported back.

  A journey of 2,700 sea-miles would need a reserve supply of coal and provisions for about twenty days.

  By 1 March, Nadolny of the General Staff had co-ordinated the Admiralty’s replies. He was now aware of the change of destination from Limerick to Tralee but neither Berlin nor New York knew that Dublin had also changed the date of arrival.

  Nadolny presumed on the basis of Devoy’s visionary letters that a huge operation had been mounted in Ireland, heavily funded by New York. Germany felt unable to contribute much; their own forces had already been stuck for a week in the mud around Verdun and, if things continued, they were likely to lose a quarter of a million men.

  Nadolny got the Foreign Office’s approval for this telegram B No 6080 to be encoded and sent to Washington:

  Between 20 and 23 April, in the evening, two or three trawlers wi
ll be able to deliver about 20,000 rifles and 10 machine-guns together with ammunition as well as explosives near Fenit Pier in Tralee Bay. Irish pilot boats will have to expect vessels, before dusk sets in, north of Tralee Bay and, at short intervals, to show two green lights close together. Delivery will have to be carried out in a few hours. Please wire whether through + + + + [Devoy] necessary steps can be secretly taken in Ireland. (Signed) Nadolny.

  German HQ hoped that these arms would assist a revolution which, in turn, might lead to the withdrawal of many British troops from the Western Front, thus assisting a German breakthrough.

  At this high point in his life, Devoy persuaded the Clan that they needed an open organization to foster the Irish cause.

  On 4–5 March, 2,300 delegates from all over the States came to an Irish Race Convention at the Hotel Astor, New York. John W. Goff of the Supreme Court, Moses-like with his white hair and beard, took the Chair.

  Devoy argued passionately that the Irish Volunteers were justified in resisting efforts to disband them. If force was used, their American cousins should help them fight back. On a world-scale, it looked a mere scuffle. But what if Ireland, on the basis of it, were to appeal to a Peace Conference after the war for her independence?

  ‘I say to you, gentlemen,’ he concluded, ‘Ireland must take action as a belligerent, establish a national government and hold military posts.’

  The Convention backed him. They formed the Friends of Irish Freedom Organisation (FOIF). It launched a fund and made this declaration signed by 350 representatives of most Irish organizations, including the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Knights of Columbanus:

  It is to Ireland we turn in order to see the most finished results of English misgovernment and selfishness … We appeal to the Concert of Powers, and particularly America, to recognize that Ireland is a European and not a British Island; and we demand in the name of liberty and of the small nationalities that Ireland may be cut off from England and restored to her rightful place among the nations of the earth.

  In Germany, things moved swiftly.