I Signed My Death Warrant Read Free

police, and they became known as Black and Tans, after a pack of hounds. Minister for War Winston Churchill persuaded the government to recruit an elite force of former military officers as police Auxiliaries. Operating on poor intelligence the Auxiliaries and Black and Tans sacked towns around the country, often striking at innocent people. In the process they drove the bulk of the Irish people into the arms of the republicans, as Collins anticipated.
    Meanwhile de Valera antagonised Irish-American elements by indicating that they would support Woodrow Wilson, if the president provided official recognition of the Irish Republic. The dispute really centred over who would speak for the Irish-Americans – de Valera or Daniel Cohalan. The whole thing came to ahead when de Valera stated in an interview with the Westminster Gazette that the Irish regime would be prepared to provide an assurance that Irish independence would never be used to undermine Britain’s security.
    Having fought alongside Britain in the Great War, he feared that Americans would be afraid to support Ireland as this would be seen as a betrayal of the recent ally, so he suggested that Bri­­tain should declare a kind of Monroe Doctrine in relation to the British Isles and Ireland would provide an assurance to Britain like Cuba gave to the United States in a 1901 treaty. The Cubans said that they would maintain their independence and not allow their territory to be used against the United States. The Americans were also afforded the base that they still hold at Guantanamo Bay. Irish-Americans denounced de Valera’s interview on the somewhat spurious grounds that it would mean that Ireland would side with Britain in the event of a war between Britain and the United States.
    â€˜The trouble is purely one of personalities,’ de Valera ad­mit­­ted. ‘I cannot feel confidence enough in a certain man [Cohalan] to let him have implicit control of tactics here without consultation and agreement with me.’ De Valera was insisting on having the final say on policy matters, though he was prepared to consult with Irish-American leaders, but they were insisting that he should have nothing to do with American politics. ‘On the ways and means they have to be consulted,’ de Valera conceded, ‘but I reserve the right to use my judgment as to whether any means suggested is or is not in conformity with our purpose.’
    Collins supported de Valera against Cohalan and the Clan na Gael leader John Devoy, going so far as to sever relations between the IRB and its sister organisation in America, Devoy’s Clan na Gael, even though Devoy had actually been touting Collins as the real Irish leader in his Gaelic American newspaper. But in one matter the Big Fellow’s help was probably less than welcome.
    Throughout the period that de Valera was in the United States, Collins helped his family, and de Valera’s wife, Sinéad, remained deeply appreciative of this help throughout the remainder of her life. As the dispute between de Valera and the Irish-Americans intensified, there were rumours that de Valera was having an affair with his secretary, Kathleen O’Connell, a Kerry woman that he met in the United States. They were travelling about America together, and de Valera later accused a Catholic bishop in Chicago of spreading rumours that he was philandering. Collins arranged for Sinéad to join de Valera in the United States, but he was less than pleased to see her as he felt her place was at home with the children.
    â€˜The visit to America was one of the biggest mistake I ever made,’ she later wrote. ‘It was a huge blunder for me to go to America. I derived neither profit nor pleasure from my visit.’ Her son Terry wrote that she often remarked that the six weeks there were ‘the longest and least profitable part of her life’.
    Meanwhile in Ireland the struggle entered its bitterest phase