Rebels

by Peter De Rosa

  Devoy thought Christensen might prove useful at some time. He organized a well-paid job for him and replied: ‘We will welcome our Norwegian friend and do all we can for him.’

  In mid-April, Casement was visited in Munich by Joe Plunkett who travelled under the alias of James Malcolm.

  ‘In my view,’ he told Joe, over and over, ‘a rising in Dublin in 1915 would be criminal stupidity.’

  When Plunkett met with the Irish Brigade in Limburg, he recognized it for the flop it was. Recruited by Irish priests, they had their own quarters and their own uniform, green with shamrock and harp, which Casement had designed. Only fifty showed the remotest interest in fighting for Ireland, though they were very willing to attack Germans in their immediate vicinity, especially those foolish enough to call them ‘English’.

  He was received at the Foreign Office and discussed arms for Ireland with the Chancellor. Tubercular, foppish, he did not exactly impress Bethmann-Hollweg.

  A rising in Ireland combined with a German push on the western front, Joe told him, would rock the British. He added, free of charge, advice on how to win the war.

  At the General Staff, he asked for 50,000 rifles with ammunition for the Volunteers. He was told bluntly that the millions of Irish-Americans in the States should provide them.

  Before he left Berlin, Casement warned him not to rely on the Germans for anything. They had no moral sense.

  *

  At midday on 7 May at Buckingham Palace, King George V gave an interview to President Wilson’s roving adviser, Colonel Ed House. They discussed in particular the activity of German submarines in British waters.

  His Majesty said, ‘Suppose they sink the Lusitania, Colonel, with American passengers aboard?’

  The Colonel replied, ‘America would be outraged enough, sir, in such an eventuality, to enter the war.’

  ‘Torpedoes cleared.’

  Kapitänleutnant Schwieger of the U-20, his eye screwed to the periscope, acknowledged. In his sights, just off the Old Head of Kinsale in southern Ireland, was a four-stacker identified by its gold lettering: Lusitania.

  The 32,000-ton liner had left Pier 54 in New York for Liverpool on 1 May, the day on which Bernstorff had placed a notice in American papers warning American citizens not to travel across the Atlantic on British ships in wartime.

  Thirty-two-year-old Walther Schwieger, in command of the U-20 for the first time, estimated that the liner was 700 metres distant and travelling at 18 knots.

  ‘Torpedoes ready, Herr Kapitän.’

  ‘Up … Down,’ he commanded. ‘Up a little. One degree right.… Meet it. Fire!’

  The submarine rocked slightly as its 21½-foot, one-ton torpedo was released with a hiss of air from the forward tube. There was silence below, apart from the yapping of a Dachshund, as the torpedo homed in at a cutting angle of 90 degrees on the starboard side of the Lusitania. It was 2.10 p.m. on 7 May.

  Between 8 and 11 that night, boat after boat put in at Queenstown Harbour with survivors and the dead. There were piles of corpses, from babies to the very old, among the paint drums and coils of rope on the old wharves. Later, the bloated and, in some cases, naked bodies were transferred to a shed. Queenstown seemed nothing but a huge charnel house.

  Of the 1,200 drowned, 118 were Americans.

  Walter Hines Page, the American Ambassador in London sent off a wire virtually urging the President to cast neutrality aside in favour of Britain.

  Judge James Gerard, the American Ambassador in Berlin, also felt that President Wilson would now come off the fence and recall him. He went to the Foreign Office and handed in a note to Herr Zimmermann. It pledged that America would do what was necessary to safeguard its citizens on the high seas.

  Zimmermann, puffing on a huge cigar, started to yell, ‘You would not dare do anything against us. We have 500,000 German reservists in America who will rise in arms against your Government if it takes action against us.’

  Gerard, his glasses steaming with indignation at the thought of naturalized Americans siding with Germany against their own country, replied quietly, ‘We, sir, have 501,000 lampposts in America to hang them from.’

  The American Press was so outraged that Devoy was afraid that America would enter the war on Britain’s side and brand his work for Irish independence as treachery. He never did trust President Wilson, anyway, that teetotal, non-smoking Presbyterian with his lop-sided idea of neutrality, providing the damned English with all the arms they needed.

  Wilson was furious but Ed House and the American Ambassadors were wrong. After his usual White House breakfast of two eggs in orange juice, he merely typed the first of his notes demanding freedom of navigation for merchant shipping. He remained committed to the idea of a peace without victory between the European combatants. He did, however, order Secretary McAdoo of the Treasury to watch personnel in the Austrian and German Embassies suspected of plotting on American soil.

  When the Head of the Secret Service, William J. Flynn, tapped the phones of the German Embassy in Washington he was surprised to overhear conversations between Bernstorff and certain ladies who found it hard to take no for an answer.

  In New York, the tapping was done by Police Commissioner Arthur Woods, while the Bomb Squad of the Department of Justice tailed German diplomats.

  Meanwhile, the U-20 returned to Wilhelmshaven where Schwieger received a hero’s welcome and countless offers of marriage from patriotic fräuleins.

  In England, due to a stalemate in the war, pressures were building up for a Coalition Government. Birrell’s was the only post no one wanted, least of all himself.

  Redmond was offered a Cabinet post but no Irish Nationalist could accept preferment in advance of Home Rule. He telegraphed Asquith: ‘In view of the fact that it is impossible for me to join, I think most strongly Carson should not be included.’

  This hardly needed spelling out. Before the war, Carson, in the name of Ulster, had described Home Rule as a mere piece of paper and had threatened to oppose the Army and Parliament with brute force.

  In fact, six members of the new Cabinet were committed to resist Home Rule, including Carson.

  Birrell agreed with the Nationalist who said that Mr Asquith had betrayed a previously hidden sense of humour.

  In Dublin, the Supreme Council of the IRB, realizing a Unionist-filled Cabinet would alter the mood in Ireland, appointed a Military Committee. Its task was to prepare in detail for a rising.

  Pearse was a natural, being the Volunteers’ Director of Operations. Joe Plunkett was chosen as strategist. The third was Eamonn Kent, a man of steel and a tremendous fighter.

  On the last day of May, one of the greatest fighters of all, a small, red-bearded man, was on his soap-box outside Liberty Hall attacking conscription. Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, known as Skeffy, was a Dublin legend.

  In 1903, he had married Hanna Sheehy and, to express their equality, they called themselves Sheehy-Skeffington.

  Skeffy was thirty-six years old. His handshake was brisk, his voice somewhat shrill, and he was transparently sincere in each of his many unpopular causes – pacifism, socialism, nationalism, feminism, teetotalism, vegetarianism. Almost everyone in Dublin was proud to say he or she had hit Skeffy at some time, either with a fist or a missile.

  He was easily recognizable in his long stockings, boots, tweed cap, and the saucer-sized button in his lapel, ‘Votes for Women’. He was often seen hanging from a lamppost, with a policeman tugging on his knickerbockers to bring him down, while he squeaked in his broad Cavan accent, ‘One last point before I go.’

  Whenever he was accused of being a crank, he bowed and said, ‘Correct. A crank is a small instrument that makes revolutions.’

  On this particular occasion, this fighting pacifist was saying, ‘There is no such thing as a war to end war, my friends. Each war is a prelude to the next,’ when he was pulled off his soap-box and arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act for opposing recruitment.

  Sentenced
to six months, he found himself in Mountjoy Jail alongside Sean McDermott, who had been convicted for the same offence. Hanna brought their six-year-old son, Owen, to see him. This was his second visit. He had been there aged three to visit his mother when she was in for breaking windows in the Castle while campaigning for women’s rights.

  Skeffy went on hunger strike. After six days, he refused drink. Four days later, he was released under what was called the Government’s cat-and-mouse legislation. He was allowed out until he was fit enough to be imprisoned again.

  When he returned home, Owen saw him through the window. He hardly recognized this pale skinny spectre as his father.

  Skeffy’s voice was so thin he could barely give him his usual greeting, ‘Hello, laddie.’

  Plunkett returned to Ireland on 25 June and immediately reported to Clarke, Pearse and Kent.

  ‘Jolly depressing news, I’m afraid. There is no Irish Brigade and so, precious little hope of German assistance.’

  Clarke refused to be downhearted. ‘Redmond’s Volunteers are drying up whereas ours are growing daily.’

  Pearse said, ‘Redmond is still preaching that a Home Rule Parliament is as certain as the rising of tomorrow’s sun. If he believes that he’s the only one in Ireland.’

  ‘Right,’ Kent said firmly. ‘He’s finished.’

  Old Tom exhaled the smoke from his cheroot. ‘The future lies with us, all right. What we need now is one big gesture to find out if the people are for us or not. You guys must have heard of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa.’

  They smiled. Who hadn’t heard of Rossa?

  An early member of the IRB in 1858, he had been captured in 1860. At his trial, he defied the Judge. Jailed he defied the prison authorities.

  One morning, the Head Warder called out, ‘Atten-tion. Salute the Governor.’

  The Governor was peering through the bars when Rossa threw the contents of his slop-pail over him, hitting him full in the face.

  ‘That,’ said Rossa, fed up with all the false salaams, ‘is my salute to you.’ He grabbed the timber doors and shook them until the whole building seemed to quaver.

  Rossa was never to forget the Head Warder crying in a whiny voice, ‘Oh, sir, ’tis clean water.’

  He was given thirty-five days solitary with his hands behind his back. His food he had to lap up like a dog. He spent his time reading D’Aubigny’s History of the Reformation, turning the pages with his teeth.

  Released in 1871, he went to the States with John Devoy. An enthusiast, he was given to crazy schemes which annoyed the hard-headed Devoy, who once accused him of being a drunkard and an embezzler.

  Clarke had known Rossa well in America. They had knelt together at the graves of dead Fenians and prayed for their souls. Not in English, Rossa said, a language God never listens to. They had filled cemeteries with the roar of prayers in Irish for the Irish dead. It was Rossa who had inspired Clarke to take part in the dynamite campaign in London which brought him fifteen years in jail.

  ‘Old Rossa’s been fading for a couple of years,’ Clarke said. ‘And his wife, Molly, has agreed with me that when he dies, she’s gonna send him home.’

  Devoy had been visiting him in St Vincent’s Hospital on Staten Island. By this time Rossa imagined he was still in an English prison, and nurses had to use force to stop him jumping out of the window.

  Devoy, knowing one dead Fenian was worth a thousand German rifles, told McGarrity, ‘An excellent idea of Clarke’s. Why not send the old bugger home?’

  Rossa died on 29 June 1915. He had a solemn High Mass on Staten Island before being shipped to Ireland where the body was given a grand reception.

  Clarke never doubted who would deliver the panegyric at the graveside in Glasnevin.

  Patrick Pearse prepared it in his little Connemara cottage at Rosmuc, County Galway, the ‘Connacht of the bogs and lakes’. It was ten miles from the nearest railway station and half a mile along a winding lane from the main road. To his romantic soul this was the real Ireland.

  The three-roomed cottage, lime-white, thatched, with a green door, was surrounded by bogland and heather slopes under an ever-changing sky. It faced north towards the everlasting mountains, the Twelve Pins of Joyce country. To complete the picturesque setting, beside it was a fifty-acre lake over whose clear waters herons hovered.

  He loved this country, knew every hill and stream by name. When he travelled it he spoke only Irish and exchanged blessings with the people after their own fashion.

  Though peaceful by nature, Pearse believed that a man with a loaded rifle is entitled to a certain respect. In his view, if there was one thing more ludicrous than a Loyalist with a gun it was a Nationalist without one.

  Preparing his panegyric, he was inspired. He had always loved histrionics; his friend and fellow teacher at St Enda’s, Thomas MacDonagh, used to say that he only became a headmaster so he could speechify whenever he liked. This was the great occasion of his life. When he was a little boy, his mother and his Great-Aunt Margaret had sung him rebel songs figuring the musical name of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa.

  He had written to Clarke, ‘How far can I go?’ On his desk was Old Tom’s reply: ‘As far as you can. Make it as hot as hell, throw all discretion to the winds.’

  Sean McGarry, who was editing a souvenir programme for the funeral, asked James Connolly to contribute an article.

  ‘No,’ Connolly said brusquely. He had been banking on a rising in September and there was no smell of one as yet. ‘When are you tin-pot revolutionaries going to stop blethering about dead Fenians and get a few vertical ones for a change?’

  When McGarry reported back to Clarke, he smiled and said, ‘Guess I’ll have a word with him myself.’

  He met Connolly in his office in Liberty Hall.

  ‘You were asking about dead Fenians, Seamus,’ he said. ‘I wanna tell you there’s no such thing. And something else. This funeral’s gonna be the best possible way of balloting the people.’

  Connolly, face to face with a vertical Fenian, one of the greatest, not only wrote an article, he promised that his trade union soldiers, the Citizen Army, would parade in force.

  Most towns displayed big posters advertising the funeral. Special trains were chartered at reduced fares.

  A worried Nathan wrote to Birrell that 14,000 rail-passengers were expected. ‘I have an uncomfortable feeling that the Nationalists are losing ground to the Sinn Feiners [the Irish Volunteers] and that this demonstration is hastening the movement.’

  His prophecy proved correct. On Sunday 1 August, packed trains brought mourners from all over Ireland.

  In the City Hall, that afternoon, Mary O’Donovan Rossa gave Tom Clarke the honour of removing the tricolour and replacing the cover on the casket.

  There was an air of tremendous excitement on the streets as the hearse, drawn by two plumed black horses, was preceded by a group of priests: seculars, Dominicans, Benedictines, and four tall Capuchins with brown habits and sandalled feet. They were followed by kilted scouts of the Fianna, Gaelic Leaguers, Transport Union workers with their banners, mayors and members of corporations from all over Ireland, many carriages and several pipe bands. An armed escort of the Irish Volunteers and the Citizen Army marched alongside the hearse.

  Thousands, bare-headed, processed around Dublin before heading for Glasnevin to the strains of the Dead March. The heavy rain of morning had given way to unblemished skies.

  In his cell in Mountjoy, Sean McDermott was straining to hear. He felt proud to be an Irish felon on a day like this.

  Above the whir of trams on the North Circular Road and the hooting of railway engines, he caught the strains of the pipers’ bands and the tramp of thousands of feet. He stood and bowed his head.

  The procession stopped in silence outside the prison, a mark of respect for Rossa who had been inside it fifty years before. When it continued, Sean did not move for over an hour till the sounds had died away.

  Dominating Glasnevin cemetery was an Ir
ish round tower, 160 feet high and topped by an eight-foot cross weighing two tons. Under it slept Daniel O’Connell, the Liberator. Buried nearby was the great Parnell, dead at forty-five, who said, ‘No man has a right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation. No man has a right to say to his country: thus far shalt thou progress and no further.’

  For Irish Catholics, graveyards were powerful places and funerals acts of defiance. Protestants had always had their cemeteries and funeral rites. But until 1825 Catholics had to bring clay from the grave, place it in the coffin at the house of their deceased and pray for him there.

  On this day, in Glasnevin, sunlight was reflected off stone, the air was fragrant with the odours of drying earth, the children watched in wonder the drift of dandelion fluff.

  After the funeral rite in Irish, an expectant hush settled on the crowd.

  Clad in the grey-green uniform of the Irish Volunteers, Patrick Pearse stepped forward and removed his cap. Now his broad white brow was visible and the clear grey eyes. Out of his left pocket, he took four pages of foolscap with his bold clear writing on it. Behind him was the burly Major John MacBride and to his left, beyond Darrell Figgis, was Tom Clarke, who stood sideways on to get a better view.

  With his right hand in his belt, Pearse spoke a few words in Irish before switching to English. His phrases moved on, slow and austere. His emotion was the more impressive for being under perfect control as his voice echoed round the natural amphitheatre.

  He spoke, he said, in place of the grey-haired fighters for Ireland’s freedom, because he represented a new generation re-baptized in the Fenian faith.

  We stand at Rossa’s grave not in sadness but rather in exultation of spirit. O’Donovan Rossa was splendid in the proud manhood of him, splendid in the heroic grace of him, splendid in the Gaelic strength and clarity and truth of him. In a closer spiritual communion with him now than ever before, we pledge to Ireland our love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate.

  There were stirrings all around him. Clarke’s eyes widened behind his glasses; if only McDermott could hear this.