The Squad

The Squad Read Online Free PDF

Book: The Squad Read Online Free PDF
Author: T. Ryle Dwyer
round-up the previous May, had died of the deadly Spanish Influenza and the British had decided to free all of those being held in connection with the ‘German Plot’. De Valera was therefore free to return to Ireland without being apprehended. His impending return was announced with the following statement to the press:
    President de Valera will arrive in Ireland on Wednesday evening next, the 26th inst., and the Executive of Dáil Éireann will offer him a national welcome. It is expected that the homecoming of de Valera will be an occasion of national rejoicing, and full arrangement will be made for marshalling the procession. The Lord Major of Dublin will receive him at the gates of the city, and will escort him to the Mansion House, where he will deliver a message to the Irish people. All organisations and bands wishing to participate in the demonstration should apply to 6 Harcourt Street, on Monday the 24th inst., up to 6 p.m.
    H. Boland
    T. Kelly,
    Honorary Secretaries.
    Such arrangements were usually reserved for royalty, so Dublin Castle banned the reception. The Sinn Féin executive held an emergency meeting. Arthur Griffith presided at what was for him and Darrell Figgis the first meeting since their arrest the previous M a y . Cathal Brugha had complained privately to Figgis some days earlier that Collins and his IRB colleagues had essentially taken over the movement from within while the others were in jail. ‘He told me that he had seen what had been passing, but that he had been powerless to change events,’ Figgis wrote. ‘It was at this meeting I saw for the first time the personal hostility between him and Michael Collins.’
    When the executive met to discuss what to do about Dublin Castle’s ban on the planned reception, Figgis asked to see the record of the executive meeting authorising the honorary secretaries to announce the plans to welcome de Valera. He was told that the issue had never come up. ‘I therefore asked Alderman T o m Kelly on what authority he, as one of the signatories, had attached his name as secretary, and he answered with characteristic bluntness that, in point of fact, he had never seen the an nouncement, and had not known of it, till he read it in the press.’
    There followed a ‘tangled discussion’ before Collins rose. ‘Characteristically, he swept aside all pretences, and said that the announcement had been written by him, and that the decision to make it had been made, not by Sinn Féin, though declared in its name, but by “the proper body, the Irish Volunteers”,’ Figgis wrote. ‘He spoke with much vehemence and emphasis, saying that the sooner fighting was forced and a general state of disorder created through the country (his words in this connection are too well printed on my memory ever to be forgotten), the better it would be for the country. Ireland was likely to get more out of a state of general disorder than from a continuance of the situation as it then stood. The proper people to take decisions of that kind were ready to face the British military, and were resolved to force the issue. And they were not to be deterred by weaklings and cowards. For himself he accepted full responsibility for the announcement, and he told the meeting with forceful candour that he held them in no opinion at all, that, in fact, they were only summoned to confirm what the proper people had decided.
    ‘He had always a truculent manner, but in such situations he was certainly candour itself,’ Figgis continued. ‘A s I looked on him while he spoke, for all the hostility between us, I found something refreshing and admirable in his contempt of us all. His brow was gathered in a thunderous frown, and his chin trust forward, while he emphasised his points on the back of a chair with heavy strokes of his hand.’
    Although Figgis may have been impressed at the way that Collins had ‘manipulated’ the organisation, Arthur Griffith was certainly not. He had no intention of
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