S HORTLY before Strongbow's invasion, seven cen- turies or so ago,
Ireland was described by one of her native chroniclers as "a shaking bog" between rival chieftains battling for power. During the recent debate in the Dail on the Army Estimates the Minister for Home Affairs said much the same thing, in less picturesque language, of Ireland to-day. After describing the systematic efforts of the " Irregulars " to wreck the country, Mr. Kevin O'Higgins said that their object "is neither to establish a Republic nor to disestablish a Free State," and that "it does not matter to them who rules, so long as it is not 'the other Irishman.'" The Republican chiefs, on their side, reply in similar terms. Meanwhile, the one thing certain is that Ireland is a shaking bog between them.
It is also a miasmatic bog, throwing off vapours which obscure and confuse the vision till it is all but impossible to tell what is reality and what illusion. In such a murk it behoves the explorer from outside to walk exceeding warily, to avoid being led astray by wandering fires, and to follow trustworthy guides—if he can find them. There are people to be found in Ireland who tell the truth to strangers, but there are not many of them, for the national custom is to tell the stranger the things he wants to be told—a custom which has proved the undoing of so many Mr. Broadbents. I have therefore been careful to confine my inquiries to those whom I know to be men of their word, and even in their case I have angled rather than asked for an opinion. I talked about the Government, and more than one has exclaimed : "There is no Government in Ireland." I babbled of public opinion, and received the answer : "The worst of it is, there is no public opinion in Ireland." I inquired about the working of the legal machinery under the new rigime, and received for reply : "There is no law in Ireland."
The pressing question is : What means has the Govern- ment, de jure if not de facto, of making its authority effective in Southern Ireland, of re-establishing the reign of law, and of creating that sound public opinion without which, in a democratic community, Governments and laws are fond things vainly invented ? Hopeful signs— perhaps the only hopeful signs—are that the members of the Free State Government seem fully conscious of the necessity of doing these things, and that they are facing the task with unmistakable courage. Ministers and deputies, as I pointed out before, arc beleaguered in the seat of Government. All alike, as they have openly stated in the Dail, are under sentence of death as traitors to the Republic, and at this moment (December 4th) the Free State forces in Dublin are attempting to prevent the success of a conspiracy to seize them before they can take the oath to the new Constitution. In such a case, of course, forewarned is forearmed. But, even if this particular plot fail, the situation will remain sufficiently serious. For the Government, as I said before, has been cleverly manoeuvred into the exact position of the " British " Government before the Truce. Indeed, in certain material respects it is in a far worse position ; for, as Mr. Cathal O'Shannon pointed out in the Dail, "there are more men in arms against the Irish than there ever were against the British." Mr. Lloyd George excused his surrender on the ground that it would take £100,000,000 and 250,000 British troops to give peace to Ireland. If this was not a gross exaggeration—I believe it to have been such—what chance has the Free State, with immensely smaller resources, of restoring peace to Ireland under immensely more difficult conditions ? To answer this demands an inquiry into the nature of the forces on which the Government must rely for the accomplishment of this task. I will therefore attempt to give some account of these forces, namely, the "National Army" and the police. " We have not in the civil Government at the moment," said Mr. O'Higgins, "the power or machinery to deal adequately with the situation." This is due to the fact that the old system was deliberately destroyed before a new one had been set up. The judges of the High Court, indeed, continued and continue to sit—as the Master of the Rolls put it—" in a hole-and-corner way " ; the County Court judges here and there still function by grace of the local " Commandant " ; but the Resident Magistrates, who were the main pillars of law and order in the countryside, are gone, with the Royal Irish Constabulary who were the executors of their authority. To replace the latter the Government k organizing a new force, the Civic Guard. Its ranks are recruited from the same class as the R.I.C., and in physique, demeanour and uniform (dark blue instead of dark green), they closely resemble the old constable.
But, as President Cosgravc stated on November 16th last, there has been no time to train them in police work. Moreover, it was decided, in spite of the misgivings expressed by Mr. O'Shannon, that they should be un- armed. The exact value of such a force in the present circumstances may be illustrated by the fact that, since I have been in Dublin, armed men have three times invaded the barracks of these guards, held them up, and stripped them of their clothes. And, besides being helpless, they are but few in number. Mr. O'Higgirk put the total number of police at the disposal of the Government at fifteen hundred.
Dublin is still patrolled by the constables of the Metro- politan Police, splendid giants, but by common consent utterly useless. For they, too, are unarmed, and, since they are a conspicuous target for revolvers, they are accustomed when disorder breaks out to find that urgent duties call them elsewhere. Sometimes, I am told, they da not even take this trouble, but flatly refuse to intervene in controversies between armed robbers and their victimi.
Finally, there is the new organization of the C.I.D. (Criminal Investigation Department), or detective service, whose headquarters at Oriel House narrowly escaped complete destruction a week or two ago at the hands or the Republicans. This force is also wholly inadequate, consisting of but a hundred men, of whom sixty have to be kept in garrison at headquarters owing to the constant menace of attack by the" Irregulars."
There being, then, no courts and practically no police, the Army has been called in—as Mr. O'Higgins explained —" to fill the gap." This is, as General Mulcahy pointed out, "no work proper for an Army, but it is doing it because there is no other machinery." The strictly military problem, he said, is confined to a limited number of some of the out-of-the-way districts. But, he added, practically the whole of the South of Ireland is without transport, and the police task of the Army is "to open up the arteries in the country which it is necessary to open up if the country is not to be choked." What, then, is the character of the Army on which this task is imposed, and how much reason had Mr. O'Higgins for urging that the Dail need feel no misgivings in entrusting it with the tremendous powers of martial law? "The Army," said General Mulcahy, in the debate of November 16th, "is no better than the people it comes from, and you know the extent to which the Irish people is a disciplined people at the moment." In short, if in the country there is no law, in the Army there is no discipline. With the physique of the rank and file no fault can be found ; a few weeks under the care of British sergeant-majors would turn them into excellent soldiers. The weakness is in the corps of officers. Michael Collins is believed to have been in favour of giving commissions in the National Army to Irish ex-officers of the Crown forces, many of whom were willing enough to serve. However that may be, this was only done in rare cases. For the rest, the " spoils " system, wisely rejected in the case of the magistracy, was adopted in the case of the Army. Conspicuous service in the "war against England" was the principal claim to promotion, and the commissioned rank of the aspirant to a military career has been, as often as not, strictly determined by the number of policemen he had "executed." More signal services were rewarded by the higher commands. Thus the warrior who organized and carried out the burning of the Custom House is now a general, and high rank has, I am told, been also bestowed upon the victor in the " battle " of Dublin of November 21st, 1920, when fourteen young, unarmed British officers were killed in their beds.
General Richard Mulcahy, who as Minister of Defence is the nominal chief of the Army, can himself claim a share in the glory of these actions, for he was responsible for them as Chief of the Staff of the I.R.A. In spite of his record, however, he is described to me as not a bloody man by nature, but rather what Mr. John Buchan describes in one of his novels as "a sentimental revolu- tionary who stabs his opponent and then weeps and prays over his grave." Ireland would gain if he were a stronger man, even at the cost of being more bloody. For what Ireland needs is men who know how to secure obedience, and this is what the officers of the National Army, with rare exceptions, do not know. Their position is, indeed, fundamentally false and vicious, for they are for the most part drawn from the same class as the privates, are some- times quite illiterate, and have none of the military experience which outweighed these defects in the case of the " ranker " officers of Revolutionary France or of the Great War. I am told that in the few cases where the troops are commanded by officers whom they respect the discipline is good enough. In general, however, in the Army as in the State there is the native objection to the rule of "the other Irishman."
Amusing stories are many illustrating the free-and-easy relations of officers and men. For instance, a British official who had business with a Divisional General asked the sentinel at the gate of the barracks where he was to be found. "I'll get him for ye, sir," said the man and, running into the yard, he shouted : " Hi ! Mike ! ye're wanted." Less amusing was the demonstration of equalitarian principles by the rank and file recently in a country town. A subscription dance was being given in a hall opposite the temporary barracks. To this all the officers had gone, but they had refused permission to the men to go, not on military but on social grounds. The men waited until the dance was in full swing and then, by way of protest, poured volleys of rifle and machine gun fire through the windows of the hall over the heads of the dancers. It is also not amusing that officers and men should be often seen drinking together in public-houses, and that the troops are sometimes drunk on duty. The spectacle of irresponsible and intoxicated lads, with loaded rifles, staggering about the streets is not re- assuring. It is not surprising that troops so ill-disciplined should in battle aim anywhere but at the enemy ; that they should on occasion even have supplied him with munitions and information ; and that a sense of grievance should from time to time have sent batches of them over to his side. For, as the Minister for Home Affairs pointed out, "the men pitted against them are to some extent men who fought along with them in the past," and, it may be added, are often their cousins or brothers. The surprising thing is that on the whole they behave so well, that peaceful citizens have so little to fear from them, and that they carry out their police duties—such as searching for arms— with the most commendable politeness. Their spirit, so far as I can judge, is as accommodating as that of the Government, and they err, if anything, not in the direction of militarist ferocity but of civilian slackness. A fortnight ago doubts were expressed to me as to whether a firing party could be found to carry out the sentences of death imposed by the new courts-martial. The doubts are now set at rest. Clearly there are elements in the Army determined to see that order is restored in the country. It remains to be seen whether these elements will prevail.
(To be continued.)
AN OBSERVER.,
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