I Signed My Death Warrant Read Free Page B

thundered when Seán MacEoin told him that Brugha had asked him to lead an attack on the cabinet in London. ‘Do you think that England has the makings of only one cabinet?’ He told MacEoin to discuss the matter with Mulcahy, who ordered MacEoin to forget about the operation and return to his battalion. On the way back to Longford, Mac­­Eoin was arrested having being wounded in a shoot out with crown forces.
    De Valera was adopting a two-pronged approach in the quest for negotiations with the British. He was encouraging more activity on the part of the IRA, but at the same time, he was speaking in moderate terms to encourage the British to negotiate. Collins appeared to adopt the opposite approach. He deliberately frustrated what he considered the more irrational plans, such as the scheme to kill members of the British cabinet, or engaging 500 members of the IRA in an open battle with the British. But at the same time he adopted a hard-line approach in his public utterances.
    In an interview with the American journalist Carl Ackermann in early April, for instance, Collins said the IRA was going to fight on ‘until we win’.
    â€˜What are your terms of settlement?’ Ackermann asked.
    â€˜Lloyd George has a chance of showing himself to be a great statesman by recognising the Irish Republic.’
    â€˜Do you mean a Republic within the British commonwealth of Nations or outside?’ Ackermann asked.
    â€˜No, I mean an Irish Republic.’
    â€˜Why are you so hopeful?’
    â€˜Because I know the strength of our forces and I know our position is infinitely stronger throughout the world,’ Collins explained. ‘The terror the British wanted to instill in this country has completely broken down. It is only a question of time until we shall have them cleared out.’
    â€˜So you are still opposed to compromise?’
    â€˜When I saw you before I told you that the same effort which would get us Dominion Home Rule would get us a Republic. I am still of that opinion, and we have never had so many peace moves as we have had since last autumn.’ Off the record, Collins indicated that ‘he was much more accommodating’, according to Ackerman, who noted that Collins had pointedly indicated that ‘No one has ever defined a Republic’.
    The British concluded there was a power struggle within Sinn Féin in which de Valera was little more than a figurehead, crying in the wilderness for a negotiated settlement, while Collins, the real leader, wanted to fight it out to the bitter end.
    â€˜De Valera and Michael Collins have quarrelled,’ Lloyd George told his cabinet on 27 April 1921. ‘The latter will have a Republic and he carries a gun and he makes it impossible to negotiate. De Valera cannot come here and say he is willing to give up Irish Independence, for if he did, he might be shot.’
    Lloyd George’s government had the greatest majority ever in the House of Commons, but he was drifting into a precarious position. Of course, he was an extremely talented politician. Born in Manchester in 1863, his family promptly moved to north Wales, where he was reared as a native Welsh speaker. He qualified as a lawyer and was elected to parliament as a Liberal in a by-election in April 1890, and he held the seat for fifty-five years. He was appointed to the cabinet in 1905 and served as chancellor of the exchequer from 1908 to 1915. He then became minister for munitions and secretary for war the following year when, with the help of unionists and Conservatives, he managed to oust prime minister Herbert Asquith and split the Liberal Party into two factions, but Lloyd George enjoyed unprecedented popularity following the successful conclusion of the First World War. He would be dubbed as ‘the man who won the war’, and the ‘architect of victory’.
    In the first post war general election in 1918, Lloyd George led the coalition to a massive