by Joe Power
The National Volunteers paraded from the O’Connell monument, which was draped with banners with slogans such as ‘To God and Country True’, to the Fair Green, Ennis. There were groups from Kilrush, Ennis, Clare Castle, Corofin, Doora, Miltown, Newmarket-on-Fergus, Lahinch, Kilmaley, Inch and Manus. They were accompanied by brass bands from Kilrush and Newmarket-on-Fergus, as well as the Ennis Fife and Drum Band. The colours were presented by Mrs Lysaght and speeches were made by Col Moore, Capt. Hemphill, and Willie Redmond, MP. In his address, Redmond emphatically declared that no member of the Volunteers would be forced to join the British Army.
Significantly, Dr Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe, and several local clergy were on the reviewing stand, along with many local politicians and some unionists. The presence of the bishop indicated his public support for John Redmond and his war policies at this time. Indeed, it seems that Dr Fogarty played an active part in ensuring that many of the Clare Volunteers stayed loyal to John Redmond when the movement split in September. Earlier, Mr E.E. Lysaght wrote to Capt. Hemphill that ‘he was afraid of the split, especially in West Clare’. Mr Michael O’Shea, a solicitor from Kilrush, also informed Hemphill that ‘the Volunteer enthusiasm in West Clare was dormant’. It seems that membership of the Kilrush corps of National Volunteers fell by half from seventy-two to thirty-six by 4 November.
Just before the county review by Col Maurice Moore in October, Dr Fogarty warned Redmond, ‘Ennistymon and Carron have unanimously refused to come to the review, in the other battalions there is a division more or less, the parade will be an accurate account of this division. McNamara and nearly all in Ennis are now right and will be there’. The turnout of between 600 and 700 must have been disappointing for the National Volunteers.19
One man who was active in West Clare in opposition to the war was Art O’Donnell from Tullycrine. Shortly after the war broke out he distributed anti-recruitment leaflets at a Killadysart sports meeting, at dances, football matches and wherever a crowd was gathered for any purpose in the district. According to Art O’Donnell there was a strong body of National Volunteers at Killadysart, who were organised by John O’Connell Bianconi. However, he stated that after the first month in which all men were exhorted to join the National Volunteers and parade in defence of their country, their activities practically ceased. The leaflets distributed by Art O’Donnell and others in West Clare may have had a big influence in the decline of the National Volunteers in the district. The anti-war pamphlet included the following passage:
What will England do?
She will recruit Irishmen to fight the Germans for her.
She will then, when finished with them,
Fling them back to the workhouses of Ireland
Reeking with foul, filthy diseases.20
War Pictures
Besides the war news in the local and national press, the people of Clare also had an opportunity to see images of the war in the local cinema at Ennis. In October war pictures under the title ‘BRAVE BELGIUM’ were shown at the Picture Palace in the town hall. This was promoted as a ‘fine selection of war pictures, including the entry of the Germans into Brussels.’ These silent movies with captions, though no doubt carefully selected and censored, brought images of the horrors of war to the local people. The people were reminded of the destruction of the great Catholic University of Louvain, which had a long association with the Irish Catholic Church since Reformation times. These propagandist images may have encouraged some young men of Clare to enlist. Jeffery states, ‘though he stopped short of explicitly encouraging Irishmen to enlist, the primate of Ireland, Cardinal Logue denounced the barbarism of the Germans in burning Rheims cathedral’.21
Some time later there was also a concert in the Town Hall, Ennis, which was held in aid of the Belgian Relief Fund, with songs and recitals. In addition there was a series of ‘excellent’ war pictures, including scenes in the trenches. The second half of the concert was opened with the now world-famous marching song: ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’.
It’s a long way to Tipperary
It’s a long way to go.
It’s a long way to Tipperary,
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye Picadilly,
Farewell Leicester Square.
It’s a long, long way to Tipperary,
But my heart’s right there.22
The burning of Rheims Cathedral in August 1914.
(Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
Ruins of the Irish Nuns’ Abbey at Ypres. (Courtesy of Australian National Archives)
The Cloth Hall, Ypres. (Courtesy of www.archives.gov.can)
One prominent businessman in Clare, Mr H.R. Glynn, JP of Kilrush, responded very enthusiastically to the crisis in Europe and offered whatever services he could to the Irish and British authorities. He sent a cheque for £10 to John Redmond for the Volunteer fund on 5 August and he wrote to Mr Augustin Birrel, the Chief Secretary in Dublin, offering his services, ‘I met you in London some time ago … I will be glad to assist you in any way. Already about 100 men have left the town of Kilrush for the war.’ On the same date in late August he wrote to the admiral in charge of the British naval depot at Queenstown, ‘offering our services to you’.
About a month later, Glynn was appointed as deputy lieutenant of County Clare. In November he responded to an appeal by the British Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, to ‘The British Cause’ in the The Times of London. He wrote to the secretary of the Central Committee as follows:
Re the appeal, “The British Cause” in The Times of 21 November, I beg to say that it will give me great pleasure to act as local hon. sec of the Central Committee for National Patriotic Organisations. I will do everything in my power to assist you in every way, and, if you approve of it, I will come to London to take instructions … I am the largest employer of labour in Clare, I am on the Finance Committee and Chairman of the Railway Committee of Clare County Council and I am a member of the Reform Club SW,
Your obedient servant, Henry R. Glynn.
Glynn also wrote to Sir Michael O’Loghlen, HML for County Clare offering his services: ‘If I can be of assistance to you in any way please send me a line’.23
Many members of the RIC voluntarily enlisted around this time as the local newspapers noted their departure. In November the Saturday Record noted that Constables J. Mannion, T. Love and ? Brogan of Bodyke had enlisted. While in December a much larger group joined the ranks of the army, including: District Inspector Connolly, Kilrush: District Inspector Rodwell, Sixmilebridge: Constables J. O’Neill, Carron; R. Barrett, Corofin, C. Ahern, New Hall: P.J. Callaghan, Whitegate: A.C. Johnstone, Kilrush: R. Howlett, Quin: M.Tierney and Jas Reilly, Ballynacally. The newspaper article noted that nationally more than 200 RIC men had joined the Irish Guards regiment.24
‘He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements shook the land. They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in them,’25 Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage.
Practical and helpful, as ever, the ladies of Clare, through the agency of the Clare Needlework Guild, organised a collection in aid of the sick and wounded soldiers. The membership was mainly drawn from the Protestant gentry class, headed by Lady Inchiquin and Lady Dunboyne, with familiar county names such as Studdert, Stackpoole, Maunsell, MacDonnell, Butler, Burton, Blood, Hickman, Mahon, Molony, Fitzgerald, O’Brien, Ball, Vere O’Brien, Ivers and Henn, and some Catholic ladies such as Ms Wilson Lynch of Belvoir and Lady O’Loghlen of Drumconora.26
Lady Inchiquin and Mrs Hickman also collected funds for a motor ambulance as a gift from Kilnasoolagh parish and succeeded in collecting £400 for this purpose. These motor ambulances were badly wanted at the front to bring wounded soldiers from the trenches to the hospitals at the base, as many had died during the hours they had to wait before they could be moved or during the long journey by the ordinary horse-drawn ambulance wagons.
Lt Henry Spaight, Royal Army Medical Corps, from Tulla descr
ibed in graphic detail in several letters to the Clare Journal in December 1914 and January 1915, the difficulties of driving motor ambulances over roads with huge craters near the front lines, and the dangers of driving by night if the sky was illuminated by flares, the crew being at risk from snipers and bombs.27
Roll of Honour
‘For king and country’
Approximately fifty-eight Clare men died this year, most of them fell on the Western Front in Belgium and France; they were mainly professional soldiers and reservists, who were called up on the outbreak of war. The majority of them are buried in Flanders, some lie in unmarked graves, while seven were lost at sea. The most prominent victims from Clare included Capt. Alexander Vandeleur, Life Guards, of Cahercon and Kilrush and Lt R.E. Parker, Royal Horse Artillery, of Ballyvalley, Killaloe. They died ‘for king and country’.28
Notes
1. Jeffrey, Keith, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p.84;
2. Denman, Terence, A Lonely Grave, The Life and Death of William Redmond (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, Colour Books, 1995), pp. 85-86. CJ, 19 April 1915.
3. SR, 8 August 1914; CJ, 8 August, 24 August, 5 November 1914; CC, 17 October 1914.
4. CJ, 6, 17 August, 1914.
5. CJ, 22 March 1915.
6. CJ, 10 August 1914
7. CJ, 29 August 1914.
8. De Wiel, Jerome Aan, The Catholic Church in Ireland, 1914-1918, War and Politics (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003) pp.5-14; William Henry, Galway and the Great War (Cork: Mercier Press, 2006), p.57.
9. CC, 17 October 1914; SR, 5 December 1914.
10. SR, 15, 22 August; CC, 22, 29 August 1914; Fitzpatrick, David, op. cit., pp.63-64. McCarthy, Daniel, Ireland’s Banner County, Clare from the Fall of Parnell to the Great War 1890-1918 (Saipan Press, Darragh, 2002), p.95. McCarthy cites the Col Maurice Moore papers in the NLI, Moore Mss, 10547, no. 5. See Australian Dictionary of Biography for a summary of the career of Arthur Lynch, http://adb.anu.edu.biography/lynch-arthur-alfred-7270.
11. Jeffery, Keith, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.40-46.
12. Fitzpatrick, op. cit., p.64; Burnell, Tom, The Clare War Dead (Dublin: The History Press Ireland, 2011), see under various names; O’ Brien, Grania R., These My Friends and Forebears, the O’Briens of Dromoland (Whitegate: Ballinakella Press, 1991), pp.206-209; CC, 22, 29 August 1914; Stacpoole, John, Stacpoole: The Owners of a Name (published privately, Auckland, New Zealand, 1991), p.106. Incidentally, Capt. Alexander Moore Vandeleur, Life Guards Regiment, of Cahercon and Kilrush was one of the prominent Protestant and unionist officers from Clare who was killed in October 1917. His body was never found. Graves, Robert, Goodbye to All That, an Autobiography (London: Penguin Classics, 2014), first published by Jonathan Cape, in 1929, pp.83-4. Graves admired the spirit of the Hon. Desmond O’Brien, a fellow schoolmate at Charterhouse Public School, ‘He was the only schoolboy in my time, who cheerfully disregarded all the school rules … at last having absented himself from every lesson and chapel for three whole days, he was expelled. He was killed early in the war while bombing Bruges [from the air]’.
13. Clare Museum: ‘Claremen in the First World War’ Exhibition, which was held in November 2012. There was a list of thirteen soldiers, among them John Cunneen, Burnell, op. cit., p.61.
14. Staunton, Martin, ‘Kilrush, Co. Clare and the Royal Munster Fusiliers’, in The Irish Sword, Vol. XVI (1984-’85), Journal of the Military History Society of Ireland, edited by Harman Murtagh, PhD., Athlone. Tom Johnstone, Orange, Khaki and Green, the Story of the Irish Regiments in the Great War,1914-18 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan,1992), pp.29-33. See also, McCance, Capt. S., History of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, Vol. 11.1861 to 1922 (Sussex, The Naval and Military Press Ltd) pp.113-120, for a detailed account of the heroic struggle of the Munsters against the X Reserve Corps of the German Army, at least six times more numerous than the Munster Battalion. See also, Jervis, Lt Col, Sir Herbert S.G. Miles, The 2ndMunsters in France (first printed in 1922, Aldershot, UK, edition, Cork: Schull Books, 1998), Chapter 1, pp.1-7.
15. SR, 19, 26 September, 1914; CJ, 17, 26 September, 2 October, 2, 7 November, 17 December and CC, 7 November, 1914. See also CC 14 February 1997. See an interview with Gerard Halloran, his grandnephew, in An Cosantoir, October 2002. Amazingly, all five surviving Halloran brothers answered the call to arms and joined the American and British armies in the Second World War against Hitler and all of them survived. Jeremiah and Martin took part in the D Day landings with the American forces, while John, William and Michael joined the British forces.
16. CC, 3 October, 14 November 1914; SR, 24 October, 31 October 1914.
17. SR, 14 November, 5 December 1914.
18. SR, 14 November 1914.
19. McCarthy, Daniel, op. cit., p.89; Fitzpatrick, op. cit., pp.89, 105; also, Maleady, Dermot, John Redmond the National Leader (Kildare: Merrion, an imprint of Irish Academic Press, 2014), p.359; SR, 31 October 1914. According to the report in the Saturday Record, the attendance on the reviewing stand included: Bishop Fogarty; Fr O’Connell, president of St Flannan’s College; Fr Slattery, PP Quin; W. Grace, PP; Fr J. O’Mara, CC; J. Hogan, CC; Fr M. McGrath, CC Clare Castle; P.J. Linnane, JP; W.H. Ball, DL Fortfergus; Mr and Mrs G. de Willis; Mr S.N.P. Waring; Mr F.F. Cullinan; Mr J.B. Lynch; Mr and Mrs T.J. Hunt; J. Lynch; Dr Coughlan; Dr Garry; Dr Geary; Dr Counihan; Dr O’Mara; Mr B. Crowe; Mr E.A. Ellis, JP; and Misses Burns, McGeogh and O’Brien, etc. See also Staunton, Martin, ‘Kilrush Co. Clare and the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the experience of an Irish town in the First World War’, in The Irish Sword, Vol. XVI (1984-86), Journal of the Military History Society of Ireland, edited by Harman Murtagh, Athlone, pp.268-272. See also, Ó Ruairc, Pádraic Óg, Blood on the Banner, the Republican Struggle in Clare (Cork: Mercier Press, 2009), pp.34-36 on the split in the Clare Volunteers after Redmond’s ‘Woodenbridge speech’. Unfortunately, O’Ruairc does not include references in his book. See also Denman, Terence, A Lonely Grave, the Life and Death of Willie Redmond (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, Colour Books, 1995), p.84.
20. Bureau of Military History 1913-21, W.S. 1,322, testimony of Art O’Donnell of Tullycrine, formerly OC West Clare Brigade, dated 14 December 1955.
21. CJ, 2 October; SR, 19 October 1914. Jeffery, op. cit., p.12.
22. SR, 14 November 1914. The chorus verse of the famous song written by Jack Judge and Harry Williams.
23. Glynn papers, H.R. Glynn to Redmond, 5 August 1914; H.R. Glynn to Birrel, 29 August 1914; William Healy, Clerk of Crown and Peace to H.R. Glynn, 26 September, 1914; H.R. Glynn to Mr H.H. Asquith, Prime Minister, 23 November 1914; H.R. Glynn to Sir Michael O’Loghlen, HML, 30 November, 1914.
24. SR, 21 November, 12 December 1914.
25. Crane, Stephen, The Red Badge of Courage, first published 1895 (New York: Bantam Classic edition, 1985), p.3.
26. CC, 29 August 1914.
27. SR, 14 November 1914; CJ, 15 December 1914 and 7 January 1915.
28. Based on lists of war dead in three publications, McCarthy, Daniel, op. cit., appendix 165-174; Burnell, op. cit., passim, and Browne, Ger., op. cit., passim.
3
PROPAGANDA, THE WESTERN FRONT AND GALLIPOLI
The war, which many had predicted, and hoped, would be over by Christmas 1914, intensified in 1915 and became a war of attrition, with huge losses on both sides and a voracious demand for new recruits. Following the first call up of reserves for the British Expeditionary Force under Sir John French, there was a demand for a new larger army. Conscription was introduced in Britain, but not extended to Ireland, largely due to the resistance of John Redmond and the Home Rule Party, which still held the balance of power in the British Parliament at Westminster, until the formation of a national coalition government on 25 May 1915.
However, a huge publicity campaign began in the press and elsewhere promoting voluntary enlistment. Recruitment in Clare was hindered by the growing opposi
tion of the local hierarchy and some local clergy towards the war, especially that of Bishop O’Dwyer and Bishop Fogarty. Besides the war on the Western Front, which for the British Army was mainly fought in Belgium, a second war front was opened by the British in 1915 at Gallipoli at the entrance to the Dardennelles in Turkey. This second front was to prove a military disaster for the British and was later abandoned after huge losses.
Pope Benedict XV appealed for peace several times during the year, but was ignored by the belligerents. In February he blamed the war on the rejection of God’s authority by modern society, secularism and socialism. ‘There was’, he said, ‘a campaign to banish the Church from education. False principles were promulgated that all men ought to be equal in society. This belief only fomented class hatred, and a weakening of the bonds between superior and inferior classes in society. We have called down upon ourselves the just wrath of God.’ The Pope called for special prayers for peace on Passion Sunday. The Blessed Sacrament was to be exposed after Mass till evening, followed by the rosary and benediction and the song ‘Tantum Ergo’.1
Perhaps taking his cue from the Pope, Bishop Fogarty issued his Lenten pastoral in February in which he blamed mankind’s wickedness for the war. He seemed to welcome the war as a purifying purgative for the evils of modern society. Under the heading, ‘NO GOD BUT MAMMON’, Fogarty wrote:
The war is a divine retribution for the world’s apostasy from God. It is another deluge let loose on the world for a state of depravity unexampled in the history of mankind. Happily, its purifying waters may wash the earth of the accumulated corruption that encumbered it … Civil governments have shown contempt for the religious and the spiritual, they have an assured policy to secularise society from top to bottom, to loose the bonds of marriage and to secularise education. They have created a deadly ooze of infidelity, scepticism, coarse sensuality, race suicide and socialistic confusion.2
