Espionage and Assasination with Michael Collins' Intelligence Unit: With the Dublin Brigade Read Free Page A

Devoy, the Clan-na-Gael was in close touch with the parent organization at home and kept it supplied with funds for every kind of genuine patriotic purpose.
    In Ireland the Brotherhood was strengthened by the release in 1909 of another Fenian, an old comrade of Devoy’s – Tom Clarke. Clarke had spent twenty years in penal servitude in England, and, on his release, he took a small tobacconist’s shop in Parnell Street, Dublin. There he administered the oath of the Brotherhood to a number of ardent young men who found no inspiration in the policy of the parliamentarians.
    Besides this secret militant organization there was another with similar aims – the liberation of Ireland from the domination of England – but which looked to other methods to achieve them. This was the Sinn Féin organization founded by Arthur Griffith. In his weekly paper, The United Irishman (afterwards Nationality ), Griffith wrote that Ireland could only be freed by the determined action of Irishmen themselves. He pointed to the example of Hungary and the means by which it was liberated from the grip of Austria. He preached passive resistance to English rule and an active social constructive policy in Ireland, by which the people should gradually take their political affairs into their own hands and squeeze out the British administration. Griffith was not opposed to the use of physical force (when it found its place afterwards in defending Dáil Éireann and in resisting the campaign of the Black and Tans, he supported every action of the Irish Republican Army), but he saw no hope of his people ever being strong enough to free their country by a military victory.
    The men who formed these two organizations were in numbers insignificant, but in brain and character they were by no means so. Tom Clarke was a man of burning patriotic faith and unquenchable courage, and his private influence was enormous. He was looked up to by the men who gathered round him as the bearer of the traditional torch of Irish freedom out of the heroic days of the past. Amongst others, he inspired a young man of great charm of personality – Seán MacDermott, who, though in delicate health, tramped through the country towns and villages, enrolling small groups of young patriots into the Brotherhood.
    Arthur Griffith’s powerful mind and indomitable character were also bound to draw to him men of force and sincerity. Devoted to his faith, he was content to preach in poverty and obscurity, confident that if the time ever came when his policy could be put into practice, Ireland would be free.
    There were two other organizations, which, though non-political, fostered the spirit of patriotism and helped to produce the great national revival of later years. They were the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association. The Gaelic League was founded to revive the national language and the Gaelic Athletic Association for the preservation of Gaelic sport. Many of the men of the Irish Republican Brotherhood were members also of one or both of these organizations, and were often recruited from them. There were also the Fianna, a Republican organization of youths recruited from the Dublin streets by Countess Markiewicz, and drilled and trained by her to act as scouts and carry despatches; and Cumann na mBan, the women’s branch of the military organization.
    This was the position in Ireland when, at last, in 1914, the efforts of the Irish Parliamentary Party were so far rewarded that a Home Rule Act, authorizing the setting up of a Dublin Parliament with limited powers, was put upon the English Statute Book.
    The first effect of this new situation was shown in N.E. Ulster. Encouraged by English Unionists, the Orangemen declared their hostility to the Act, and their determination to wreck it so far as Ulster was concerned. Sir Edward Carson, the Orange leader, began at once to enrol a volunteer force and to import arms from Germany.
    This was a chance