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When a boatload of reporters steamed to the Easter Rising

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Fourteen London-based newspaper correspondents clambered aboard a British naval destroyer at Holyhead, Wales, in the pre-dawn hours of April 27, 1916. They were soon underway for Dublin, where three days earlier Irish separatists seized several buildings and proclaimed a republic. Chief Secretary for Ireland Augustine Birrell and the British Admiralty invited the reporters to make the 67-nautical-mile sprint across the Irish Sea. They hoped to influence coverage of the insurrection cabled to the rest of the world, though Britain also imposed censorship and disseminated propaganda through its own press bureau since it began fighting the First World War two years earlier.

Arthur S. Draper, undated. Library of Congress

Arthur S. Draper, 34, of the New York Tribune was among the group of what today would be called embedded reporters. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to an English father and an American mother, he graduated from New York University in 1905 and soon joined the Tribune. The paper transferred him to London in 1915 to cover the war.[1]1910 U.S. Census, Census Place: Brooklyn Ward 24, Kings, New York; Roll: T624_975; Page: 18B; Enumeration District: 0656; FHL microfilm: 1374988; “Arthur Draper, Literary Editor”, The New … Continue reading

In one of several stories syndicated to U.S. newspapers, Draper recounted the correspondents were cold and shivering after the hastily organized, 300-mile train trip from London to Holyhead.[2]“Fierce Fighting Rages in Fire-Swept Dublin”, by Arthur S. Draper, New York Tribune, April 30, 1916 (Dateline April 29, 1916). Also, “Tales Of ‘The Week Of Dublin’s Nightmare’ ”, by … Continue reading Once aboard the destroyer, ironically named Dove, the correspondents welcomed the ship steward’s offer of hot chocolate.

We crawled through a coal hole aft and dropped into a cabin built to hold four instead of 14 men. Mr. Birrell found a place in the captain’s cabin. If you have never been on a destroyer crossing the Irish Sea you can get some notion of the motion by crawling into a barrel and taking a trip through Hell Gate.[3]Hell Gate is a narrow tidal strait in the East River in New York City. … Fourteen guests taxed (the steward’s) supply of cups and saucers, and we were well away before the first steaming bowl came teetering in from the pantry.

One of the correspondents soon turned “pale about the gills” and lurched for the ladder leading up to the deck. Others quickly followed as the ship “pitched, tossed, rolled, her lower decks awash like a Long Island Sound racer running before a swift breeze,” Draper wrote. “Holding fast to anything within their grasp, 11 regular reporters were swaying and lunging in imminent danger of being swept away.” While the majority lacked sea legs, the man from The Christian Science Monitor “slept peacefully with his head on the edge of a bunk and his feet on top of a bag of posters proclaiming martial law in Ireland.”

In his stories about the insurrection, the Boston newspaper correspondent repeatedly referred to himself as “the representative of The Christian Science Monitor,” with no byline on the reporting. Most of the other journalists aboard the Dove were not Americans but natives of the United Kingdom who worked as stringers for U.S. papers or wire services. They were selected for the journey because of the influence their reporting might have to counter the anticipated anti-British reaction of Irish Americans as the United States remained on the sidelines of the Great War.[4]Eddie Bohan, The 1916 Easter Rising & The American Press Pack, 2017. This 50-page paperback, published independently, contains a short bibliography but does not footnote specific details.

Wilbur S. Forrest of United Press, the 29-year-old, Illinois-born son of physician, was another native of America. His career began at The Peoria (Ill.) Journal Transcript after attending Bradley University in Peoria. He joined the wire service in 1910, working in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C., before being sent to Europe as an assistant general manager. In May 1915 Forrest reported from Queenstown (Cobh) on the German torpedo sinking of the Lusitania off the south Irish coast.[5]”Wilbur S. Forrest, 90, Is Dead; Was Herald Tribune Executive”, The New York Times, March 26, 1977. Eleven months later he steamed back to Ireland on the Dove.

HMS Dove. Imperial War Museums

“The little ship shivered in every plate and joint, and pitching like a bronco, it swayed and rolled at decidedly disturbing angles,” Forrest recalled of his ride to the rising.[6]Wilbur Forrest, Behind The Front Page: Stories of Newspaper Stories in the Making. (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company Inc., 1934). See Chapter 4, “Dublin Explodes”, pp 46-65. “The destroyer was running dark. A think, damp mist hung low and obscured the sky. The ship’s high speed added to the darkness was good protection against the German U-boats which roamed the Irish Sea at will.”

Dublin arrival

Finally, as dawn broke “after what seemed a lifetime of misery” aboard the Dove, Draper wrote, the newspaper men got their first look at smoke-shrouded Irish capital. Birrell, who for nine years as chief secretary had loathed making the Irish Sea crossing by regular mail boat,[7]Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2006), pp 24, 188. re-emerged to offer the journalists a quick farewell: “Good luck, gentlemen. I don’t know what will become of all of you,” he shouted as he disembarked to a waiting motor car under heavy guard. The Monitor correspondent added, “it was impossible to avoid retorting, ‘The same to you, sir.’ “[8]”Summary Given Of Short-Lived Rising In Dublin”, The Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 1916.

Draper continued: “We stood there for ten minutes absolutely ignorant of the danger surrounding us. The worst shot in the Irish Republic’s army could not have missed us had he shut his eyes and pulled the trigger with his big toe.” Forrest recalled the scene differently, writing the Dove sprayed a warning of machine-gun fire that briefly silenced the rebel snipers. “Not a shot was being fired when our party disembarked one by one, jumping from the destroyer’s prow to the quay and heading at no slow pace and with zigzag steps toward a British barricade three hundred yards away.”

The reporters dashed for the nearby London and North Western Hotel. They arrived without injury at the red brick, three-story building on the quayside next to the London and North Western Railway Company train station and steam packet terminal. The 19th century building still stands in the city’s Docklands district, about three blocks east of the Samuel Beckett Bridge.

“We watched the bombardment from a window on the third floor of a hotel,” Forrest wrote in one of his contemporary dispatches. “Naval boats, swinging in close to shore, sent shells screaming into the city, bringing the rebel strongholds crashing down with loud roars. … Soldiers were posted in large force along the quays and in the warehouses across the street from our hotel, answering the sharp volleys of the sniping rebels.”[9]”Shells Rout Rebels”, by Wilbur S. Forrest, The Washington Post, April 30, 1916.(Dateline April 29, 1916).

This image appeared on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer on May 2, 1916. The British destroyer with the reporters aboard would have entered the Liffey on the opposite side of the bridge to the right of the Customs House dome.

Uneven predictions

Draper’s analysis of the rising proved prescient about the short-term military outcome, condescending of the “hot-blooded Irish,” enamored with Britain’s weapons of war, and incorrect about the long-term political consequences. He wrote:

Possibly before this dispatch reaches you the Sinn Fein rebellion will be over. It’s life, however short, will be remembered. … It is seldom that reporters can sit in a hotel room and by peeping through drawn blinds see revolutionary history being made … I saw yesterday a British gun not one hundred feet away perform a marvelous feat of marksmanship. Directly opposite, across the (Liffey) river, stands a big distillery occupied by rebel snipers who had the audacity to fly the flag of the Irish republic from its roof. … Ten times (the gun) roared, every shot finding a mark … It was a wonderful exhibition of shooting. Later came the roar of machine guns and rifles telling the final story. Another rebel stronghold gone. …

A systematic search is being made by the military in all the suspected districts. Young Irishmen are very volatile. Their range of emotions is great. From the crest of so-called patriotism they drop quickly to the depths of despair. … They don’t look like martyrs on this chilly gray morning. Just poor, plain Irish lads, huddled together like so many sheep in the stockyards. … Brave they were, without doubt, but they were victims of misguided judgement. They deserve no sympathy. They will get little. …

To me the chief interest is not in the number of deaths or the amount of destruction, both of which are lamentably large, but in the types of men who have thrown away lives for a futile cause. In New York we have many of them. You see them on the bleachers at the Polo Grounds (baseball stadium), at the Socialist meetings in Union Square, at the strikes in West Street, and on the surface lines. …

Whatever following (Sinn Fein) had in civilian ranks has gone forever, as the people are already feeling the pangs of hunger as a result of the food shortage, due to the rebellion. After talks with a few civilians and a brief study of the faces of the frightened, worried, dazed women huddled in the doorways, I judge there is little sympathy of any kind with the rebellion. … The “republic” is shot to pieces. All the spirit of the rebellion is gone.

The rebels surrendered a few days later. Birrell returned to London “on a small destroyer, lately employed in bombarding Liberty Hall,” he recalled 21 years later.[10]Augustine Birrell, Things Past Redress (London: Farber and Farber Limited, 1937). See Chapter 11, “Ireland, 1907-1916”,  pp. 219-220. Whether Birrell returned aboard the Dove or another navy vessel is unclear, but it turned out to be his last Irish Sea crossing as chief secretary. He resigned from the government as soon as he reached London.

Wilbur Forrest in 1915 passport photo.

Afterward

During the first two weeks of May 1916 the British military executed 15 leaders of the rising, prompting an outpouring of sympathy and support that Draper failed to anticipate. Later that summer, insurrectionist Sir Roger Casement, who had been captured at Kerry, was tried for treason in London. “His expression did not change when the Lord Chief Justice arose to declare him guilty of the crime and pronounce the sentence of death,” Forrest recalled in his memoir nearly 20 years later. The reporter’s more detailed description of Casement “must have been too sympathetic,” he concluded, because the British censor declined to pass his story at the time.

A year after the rising, the United States finally joined Britain and the Allies in the Great War. In addition to those reporting of events on the continent, Draper returned to Dublin in July 1917 to cover the opening of the Irish Convention, the British government’s failed effort to resolve the separatist crisis. Draper transferred back to America in 1925 as foreign editor of the newly merged New York Herald Tribune; and the following year he became assistant editor of the paper. Draper left that position in 1933 to become editor-in-chief of the Literary Digest but he resigned two years later. He worked briefly for the U.S. Department of Labor.[11]Draper obituary, N.Y. Times, 1963.

Forrest joined Draper as a member of the Herald Tribune staff in 1918. In 1927, Forrest became the first correspondent to report aviator Charles A. Lindbergh’s safe landing in Paris. Through the 1930s he served as a special writer in China, Japan, and Washington. This is also when he authored his memoir, Behind The Front Page, quoted above. Forrest later became an executive at the Herald Tribune and served as head of the Reid Foundation, which provided fellowships to journalists.[12]Forrest obituary, N.Y. Times, 1977.

By coincidence, HarperCollins Publishers this month released, The Turning Tide: A Biography of the Irish Sea by Welshman Jon Gower. The book is described as “a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance” that combines “social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics.” I don’t know if the narrative includes the crossing detailed in this post.

References

References
↑1 1910 U.S. Census, Census Place: Brooklyn Ward 24, Kings, New York; Roll: T624_975; Page: 18B; Enumeration District: 0656; FHL microfilm: 1374988; “Arthur Draper, Literary Editor”, The New York Times, Oct. 26, 1963.
↑2 “Fierce Fighting Rages in Fire-Swept Dublin”, by Arthur S. Draper, New York Tribune, April 30, 1916 (Dateline April 29, 1916). Also, “Tales Of ‘The Week Of Dublin’s Nightmare’ ”, by Arthur S. Draper, New York Tribune, June 4, 1916 (Dateline May 5, 1916).
↑3 Hell Gate is a narrow tidal strait in the East River in New York City.
↑4 Eddie Bohan, The 1916 Easter Rising & The American Press Pack, 2017. This 50-page paperback, published independently, contains a short bibliography but does not footnote specific details.
↑5 ”Wilbur S. Forrest, 90, Is Dead; Was Herald Tribune Executive”, The New York Times, March 26, 1977.
↑6 Wilbur Forrest, Behind The Front Page: Stories of Newspaper Stories in the Making. (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company Inc., 1934). See Chapter 4, “Dublin Explodes”, pp 46-65.
↑7 Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2006), pp 24, 188.
↑8 ”Summary Given Of Short-Lived Rising In Dublin”, The Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 1916.
↑9 ”Shells Rout Rebels”, by Wilbur S. Forrest, The Washington Post, April 30, 1916.(Dateline April 29, 1916).
↑10 Augustine Birrell, Things Past Redress (London: Farber and Farber Limited, 1937). See Chapter 11, “Ireland, 1907-1916”,  pp. 219-220.
↑11 Draper obituary, N.Y. Times, 1963.
↑12 Forrest obituary, N.Y. Times, 1977.

De Valera’s arrest and the Irish election, August 1923

U.S. press attention to Ireland waned after the country’s year-long civil war ended in May 1923. Americans focused on domestic politics, including the Aug. 2 heart attack death of President Warren G. Harding and transfer of power to Calvin Coolidge. But American newspapers revived their coverage of Ireland with the Aug. 15 arrest of republican leader Éamon de Valera two weeks before the country’s first general election of the post-revolutionary period.

De Valera had been in hiding for months, but he continued to promote the republican cause. In mid-July 1923 he issued a statement that was widely reported in U.S. papers, in part for the drama that it had been smuggled from Ireland to France by airplane. The statement was delivered to Webb Miller, European correspondent of United Press. The Michigan native, then 32, began his career as a criminal courts reporter at the Chicago American. As a freelance correspondent in 1916 he followed U.S. Army Gen. John J. Pershing into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa. That reporting led to Miller’s job with United Press, which assigned him to Europe as America entered World War I.[1]Webb Miller, I Found No Peace, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936); and “Webb Miller” in Robert B. Downs and Jane B. Downs, Journalists of the United States: Biographical Sketches of Print and … Continue reading He reported periodically from Ireland, including several dispatches during the 1918 conscription crisis.

Miller’s story noted that de Valera was wanted for arrest by the Irish Free State government he opposed. The exiled leader’s statement predicted “the full strength of the republicans will not appear in the coming elections” in late August. [2]”De Valera Sends Statement Into Paris By Plane”, Stockton (Calif.) Record, July 17, 1923, shown in this post, and other papers.

De Valera also complained about the Free State government’s suppression of the press, the same tactic the British had used against republicans earlier in the revolutionary period. And he thanked Americans for their financial support of the republican cause and assured the money was “applied strictly to the purposes for which they were subscribed.”

The Gaelic American, edited by de Valera’s arch antagonist John Devoy, described the statement as a “cheap publicity stunt.” It ridiculed the strategy of “clinging to the old mystery game” by delivering the text in “his phantom airplane.” The real reason for de Valera’s statement, the Gaelic American insisted, was to encourage the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic (AARIR) to send money across the Atlantic for the upcoming election. De Valera created the AARIR in the late 1920 split with the Devoy-backed Friends of Irish Freedom.[3]”De Valera Drops His ‘Idealism;’ Politician Now”, The Gaelic American, July 28, 1923. The two men also took opposite sides on whether to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921.

Dev’s arrest

Free State troops arrested de Valera a month later, minutes after he began speaking on a campaign platform in Ennis, County Clare. The Associated Press described the “sensational circumstances” in a dispatch that made the front pages of many American newspapers later the same day.[4]”De Valera Made Prisoner By Free Staters At Ennis”, The Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, Aug. 15, 1923, and other papers. In some papers the AP story was a brief among other foreign and domestic news, in others the arrest grabbed the top headline:

Eamon de Valera’s arrest in Ennis was the same day top story in Butte, Montana, a mining town with a significant Irish population that he visited in July 1919, during his 18-month American tour. (Image is above the fold only, not the full front page.)

The Gaelic American missed the arrest in its edition of three days later, an example of how the more robust financial resources and access to syndicated cable networks gave the daily papers an advantage over smaller weeklies. A front page story in the Devoy paper noted that de Valera was expected to resurface at the Aug. 15 campaign event in Ennis. In its next issue a week later, the Gaelic American declared “De Valera Is Laid By The Heels At Last” across the top of the front page. And maintaining its frequent role of media watchdog, the story noted:

There are several versions of the event, but all agree in the main details, and each contains a record of some incidents not contained in the others. The Associated Press report is the fullest, but the (New York) Times and the (Hearst-owned New York) American supply many interesting details. The main difference between the various reports is whether de Valera fainted when Free State troops fired a blank volley over the heads of those on the platform” … while other versions say he threw himself down or was knocked down by others. “In either case the picture which his friends have drawn of the cool, calm, self-controlled man who faces danger with an iron nerve disappeared forever.[5]”De Valera Is Laid By The Heels At Last“, The Gaelic American, Aug. 25, 1923.

About a month after the arrest, another version of the event was reported in the Boston Globe by Chester A. Arthur, Jr., grandson of the late 19th century U.S. president, who attended the Ennis rally with his wife. As Free State troops opened fire, “all the men and women near (de Valera) flung themselves upon him and he is born down, obviously against his will,” Arthur wrote.[6]”Bullets Flew When De Valera Was Taken”, The Boston Globe, Sept. 14, 1923.

Jones interview

A week before his arrest de Valera gave an in-person interview to Dr. Edward Dewitt Jones, Texas-born pastor of the Central Christian Church in Detroit and a prolific writer, including five books. Jones reported the interview process began with the usual exchange of written questions and replies delivered through de Valera’s trusted messengers. Their meeting was arranged, Jones continued, with the benefit of a letter of introduction he held from “a distinguished Irish American.” Jones did not name this person in his story, but it quite possibly was Henry Ford. The automobile tycoon had opened a tractor factory near Cork city in 1919 and met privately with de Valera that October, during the Irish leader’s American tour. Jones interviewed Ford for a syndicated newspaper story before leaving for Ireland in July 1920.

The preacher wrote that he asked the automaker if he had any advice for the people of Ireland.

“Sure. Tell them to lay down the shillalah (sic, shillelagh) and take up the saw,” Ford replied.[7]”Ford Says Prohibition Is But Smoke Screen Of Crafty Politicians”, The Scranton (Pa.) Times, July 21, 1923.

Jones detailed the elaborate precautions he was required to take enroute to meeting “the Irish pimpernel.”[8]”De Valera, Disguised By Beard, Lived Safely In Heart of Dublin”, The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., Aug. 28, 1923, and other papers. This included switching taxies and cars that drove circuitous routes through Dublin and its suburbs. Though Jones does not mention being blindfolded, the drama is similar to what other American reporters experienced to interview de Valera in early 1919, after his escape from Lincoln prison.[9]See my 2019 piece, March 1919: First interviews with escapee Éamon de Valera.

The Chicago Tribune published this photo of de Valera’s arrest on Aug. 26, 1923, 11 days after the event. It claims to be the only image of the arrest.

When they came face-to-face, De Valera sported “a heavy brown beard” that “made him look like a Frenchman,” Jones reported, then added the whiskers were shaved by the time he was arrested eight days later. The American, who was 46, described the 41-year-old de Valera as appearing older than he expected, yet “courteous, conciliatory in speech, stubborn in his opinions, spirited even in eclipse, but not embittered.” De Valera’s message to Jones mirrored the statement he sent to Miller: the 1922 election that upheld the Irish Free State was unfair, and the upcoming contest would be, too.

The North American Newspaper Alliance distributed the interview. The alliance had been created a year earlier by more than four dozen papers in the United States and Canada, led by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Among the papers that used the de Valera interview, most appear to have published it on Aug. 28, the day after the Irish election.

General election

Many anti-treaty republicans, including de Valera, from the losing side of the civil war remained imprisoned during the election campaign. Most were committed to not participate in the legislature, even if elected. Cumann na nGaedheal, successor party of the pro-treaty wing of Sinn Féin, won the election and went on to form the government.

The Associated Press cited “Dublin correspondents of the London newspapers” as the source of its descriptions of “slow and steady” turnout in the capital while “reports from the provinces indicate the day passed peacefully.”[10]”Sixty Percent Of Irish Vote In Free State Elections”, The Buffalo (NY) Evening Times, Aug. 28,1923, and other papers. The wire story included that republican Countess Markievicz had been pelted with an egg at Rathmines, while in Waterford four brass bands representing competing political parties played over each other in an “old time election day amusement.” Markievicz and de Valera prevailed in their races. “A remarkable feature of the elections is the absence of the influence of Jim Larkin, a radical labor leader,” wrote Hugh Curran of the Dublin-based Irish Times, also a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune‘s Foreign News Service.[11]”Erin Peaceful As Vote Is Taken; Ballot Is Heavy”, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 28, 1923. Larkin, a socialist and communist agitator, had returned to Ireland earlier in the year after being released from the New York prison where he was sentenced on conviction of criminal anarchy.

“The fact that about 60 percent of the eligible voters went to the polls shows an interest which compares favorably with that evinced in American elections,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle editorialized.[12]”A Peaceful Election In Ireland”, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 29, 1923.. “On the whole, the election bodes nothing but good for the Irish people.”

The Gaelic American cited election coverage from Denis O’Connell, an Irish-born correspondent for the Heart-owned Universal Service news wire, and the Associated Press, in its issue five days after the election.[13]”‘Model Election,’ Is The Verdict On Contest In Ireland”, The Gaelic American, Sept. 1, 1923. The paper provided more comprehensive coverage the following week. It concluded:

Notwithstanding, in view of the fact that on its shoulders fell the heavy burden of restoring order to a country reduced to a state of anarchy by the de Valera tactics, the result, taking it all in all, is a sweeping victory for government by sanity, and the fact, in contradiction to de Valera’s protest that the election would not be a free election, that there was complete freedom on the part of every voter … coupled with the order that prevailed at the polls, is a happy augur for the future.[14]”Griffith And Collins Vindicated By Result Of Election In Ireland”, The Gaelic American, Sept. 8, 1923.

Stephen Gwynn

The Gaelic American also recommended and reprinted election coverage from Irish journalist Stephen Gwynn, which appeared in the New York Times. A Protestant nationalist, Gwynn had represented Galway city in the British Parliament as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1906 to 1918. He supported John Redmond’s call for the Irish Volunteers to support the British and Allied military effort in the Great War, where he served as a captain.

Gwynn’s Sept. 2, 1923, story is linked from its headline, “Irish Vote Assures Stable Government.”

The De Valera papers at University College Dublin contain more than 50 pages of statements that he issued to foreign correspondents, or content they sent to him for approval prior to publication, during this period. The collection includes statements issued to Miller, Jones, and Joe Toye of The Boston Herald-Traveller.[15]Eamon de Valera Papers, P150. See 22. REORGANISATION OF SINN FÉIN, PEACE MOVES AND CEASEFIRE, November 1922 – August 1923, Box 1790, p. 660

References

References
↑1 Webb Miller, I Found No Peace, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936); and “Webb Miller” in Robert B. Downs and Jane B. Downs, Journalists of the United States: Biographical Sketches of Print and Broadcast New Shapers from the Late 17th Century to the Present, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1991.), p 239.
↑2 ”De Valera Sends Statement Into Paris By Plane”, Stockton (Calif.) Record, July 17, 1923, shown in this post, and other papers.
↑3 ”De Valera Drops His ‘Idealism;’ Politician Now”, The Gaelic American, July 28, 1923.
↑4 ”De Valera Made Prisoner By Free Staters At Ennis”, The Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, Aug. 15, 1923, and other papers.
↑5 ”De Valera Is Laid By The Heels At Last“, The Gaelic American, Aug. 25, 1923.
↑6 ”Bullets Flew When De Valera Was Taken”, The Boston Globe, Sept. 14, 1923.
↑7 ”Ford Says Prohibition Is But Smoke Screen Of Crafty Politicians”, The Scranton (Pa.) Times, July 21, 1923.
↑8 ”De Valera, Disguised By Beard, Lived Safely In Heart of Dublin”, The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., Aug. 28, 1923, and other papers.
↑9 See my 2019 piece, March 1919: First interviews with escapee Éamon de Valera.
↑10 ”Sixty Percent Of Irish Vote In Free State Elections”, The Buffalo (NY) Evening Times, Aug. 28,1923, and other papers.
↑11 ”Erin Peaceful As Vote Is Taken; Ballot Is Heavy”, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 28, 1923.
↑12 ”A Peaceful Election In Ireland”, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 29, 1923.
↑13 ”‘Model Election,’ Is The Verdict On Contest In Ireland”, The Gaelic American, Sept. 1, 1923.
↑14 ”Griffith And Collins Vindicated By Result Of Election In Ireland”, The Gaelic American, Sept. 8, 1923.
↑15 Eamon de Valera Papers, P150. See 22. REORGANISATION OF SINN FÉIN, PEACE MOVES AND CEASEFIRE, November 1922 – August 1923, Box 1790, p. 660

U.S. press on Harry Boland’s ‘race vendetta’ remark

Irish Republican and Sinn Fein politician Harry Boland in 1919. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

Irish separatist Harry Boland urged a “race vendetta” against the British empire during a Jan. 6, 1921, speech at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The U.S. press jumped on his comment, reported in several variations, as highlighted:

  • “If England does not stop its campaign of murder in Ireland we will preach a race vendetta among the millions of Irish throughout the world and take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”–New York Times[1]“Boland Threatens World Vendetta”, New York Times, Jan. 7, 1921.
  • “If England does not stop her campaign of murder in Ireland we will preach a race vendetta all over the world, and when an Irishman is killed we will demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”–New York Herald[2]“Irish In America Are Called Upon To Fight Britain”, New York Herald, Jan. 8, 1921
  • “I say as calmly and deliberately as I can, that if Britain does not stop her campaign of murder in Ireland, then we will preach to our millions scattered all over the world, a race vendetta, and demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The Irish Times, Philadelphia[3]“No Cause To Question Faith Of Ireland’s Leaders, Says Boland” The Irish Times, Jan. 15, 1921. The pro-Irish independence weekly reported the quote as what appears to be the full text of the … Continue reading

Some papers simply quoted the phrase “race vendetta” in the headlines or body of their story, then used other direct quotes from the speech. Either way, Boland’s remark added to the swirl of Irish news in the American press at the start of 1921:

  • Lord Mayor of Cork Donal O’Callaghan on Jan. 4 arrived as a stowaway aboard a commercial ship at Newport News, Virginia. He became the subject of a deportation debate as U.S. officials also renewed their attention on Boland’s status in the country without a passport.
  • The American Commission on Conditions in Ireland continued its hearings on allegations of British atrocities in the two-year-old Anglo-Irish War. The American Committee for Relief in Ireland launched a separate effort to raise money for civilian victims of the war.
  • The upstart American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic (AARIR) and the established Friends of Irish Freedom publicly feuded over the best way for the Irish in America to secure U.S. government recognition of the Irish republic.

One of the first complaints about Boland’s broadside came from Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of The Nation magazine and a key supporter of the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland. Villard addressed a letter to Boland, which the writer released to the press, to “protest most vigorously” the race vendetta comments “if they are correctly reported in the press.”[4]Villard to Boland, Jan. 7, 1921, Oswald Garrison Villard Papers, 1872-1949 (MS Am 1323). Houghton Library, Harvard University.

The top of Villard’s letter to Boland. (Harvard)

Villard quoted Boland as calling for “a race vendetta in America” on behalf of the Irish cause. His letter continued:

…any suggestion that the (Irish) struggle be transferred to this side of the ocean will be resented throughout this country by all right-thinking Americans. The one hope of winning large numbers of Americans to the Irish cause is first to prove the justice of it, and second, to refrain from any acts of violence either in Ireland or here. … If any considerable number of our citizens of Irish birth and sympathies should act upon your advice and start a vendetta in this country against things or persons English over here, a justified wave of resentment would sweep from one side of the nation to the other and make it impossible for the Irish cause to obtain further hearing. Do not make any mistake; American interest in self-determination for Ireland does not imply hostility to England.[5]Ibid.

The New York Tribune editorialized that Boland’s “ravings” should not to be taken seriously and were just another example of Ireland being “attacked from the rear by fool friends.”[6]“The Boland Vendetta”, New York Tribune, Jan. 8, 1921 The paper suggested “a committee of friends of Ireland might attend him on his tours as a guard, ready to yank him to his seat when signs come that his temperament is about to boil over.”

The New York Times, regularly critical of the Irish cause and dubious of the American Commission, praised Villard for drawing a “broad and clear” line against “Bolandism or Bolandery or whatever that incitement to violence may be called.”[7]“Topics of the Times: Mr. Villard Sounds A Warning”, New York Times, Jan. 10, 1921. The Times suggested that the “right-thinking Americans” described by Villard “are well aware that England will not grant complete independence to Ireland” for the same reasons the U.S. government would not grant sovereignty to Long Island, New York, “no matter how fiercely they might demand it.”

A third editorial, which was syndicated nationwide, noted Villard’s “friendliness to the Irish cause cannot be questioned” and praised his letter as “good advice … administered with rare effectiveness.” The editorial “hoped that Irish leaders who, perhaps unwittingly, have been offending against American traditions and interests, and thereby hurting their own cause, will be more circumspect hereafter.”[8]“Advice To A Propagandist”, Star-Gazette, Elmira, New York, Jan. 15, 1921, and other papers.

But the harshest editorial criticism came from John Devoy, editor of The Gaelic American, who regularly sparred with Boland and his boss, Irish President Eamon de Valera. The pair had created the AARIR only weeks before Boland’s Garden speech, shortly before de Valera returned to Ireland. The strategy of confrontation with Devoy and the Friends of Irish Freedom was de Valera’s, but Boland was largely responsible for its execution, according to Boland biographer David Fitzpatrick. While this alienated many old supporters of the Irish cause in America, it also mobilized hundreds of thousands of Americans, including those without Irish heritage, behind the demand for self-determination.[9]David Fitzpatrick, Boland, Henry James (“Harry”) in the online Dictionary of Irish Biography, 2009.

 

Devoy reported Boland’s controversial comment as: “If Britain does not stop her campaign of murder we will start a race vendetta, take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and I tell you again that you should tear down everything English in America if this does not stop.”[10]“Boland Makes An Idiotic Speech”, The Gaelic American, Jan. 15, 1921. Devoy acknowledged that Boland described himself as speaking “calmly,” but the editorialist insisted the speaker “was very much heated up” and “shouted” his remarks. Devoy continued:

The restraining hand of de Valera has been withdrawn, and Boland is free to wag his tongue and make a fool of himself. Men who really contemplate vendettas and exacting ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth’ don’t swagger about it on public platforms and enable the enemy to take precautions and get evidence to secure convictions. Someone close to Boland ought to take Daniel O’Connell’s saying to heart when he was interrupted by a fool at a public meeting: ‘Will someone stuff a wisp of hay in that calf’s mouth.’”[11]The “wisp of hay” comment found in Michael MacDonagh, The Life of Daniel O’Connell, (London: Cassell and Company Limited, 1903), p. 320.

Boland acknowledged to his diary that he had been in “bad form” and “made an error” in the speech, which brought a “full blast” from the press. He told de Valera that he had “let my heart run away with my head.” Boland attempted to walk back his remark over the next few months, even as he insisted that he was “sadly misquoted.” Others urged him to let the matter rest.[12]David Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution, 1887-1922. (Cork: Cork University Press, 2003), p. 195.

Over the next year Boland returned briefly to Ireland, came back to United States, then went back to Ireland again. He was shot while fighting against government forces during the Irish Civil War and died Aug. 1, 1922, age 35.

References

References
↑1 “Boland Threatens World Vendetta”, New York Times, Jan. 7, 1921.
↑2 “Irish In America Are Called Upon To Fight Britain”, New York Herald, Jan. 8, 1921
↑3 “No Cause To Question Faith Of Ireland’s Leaders, Says Boland” The Irish Times, Jan. 15, 1921. The pro-Irish independence weekly reported the quote as what appears to be the full text of the speech, but is not identified as such.
↑4 Villard to Boland, Jan. 7, 1921, Oswald Garrison Villard Papers, 1872-1949 (MS Am 1323). Houghton Library, Harvard University.
↑5 Ibid.
↑6 “The Boland Vendetta”, New York Tribune, Jan. 8, 1921
↑7 “Topics of the Times: Mr. Villard Sounds A Warning”, New York Times, Jan. 10, 1921.
↑8 “Advice To A Propagandist”, Star-Gazette, Elmira, New York, Jan. 15, 1921, and other papers.
↑9 David Fitzpatrick, Boland, Henry James (“Harry”) in the online Dictionary of Irish Biography, 2009.
↑10 “Boland Makes An Idiotic Speech”, The Gaelic American, Jan. 15, 1921.
↑11 The “wisp of hay” comment found in Michael MacDonagh, The Life of Daniel O’Connell, (London: Cassell and Company Limited, 1903), p. 320.
↑12 David Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution, 1887-1922. (Cork: Cork University Press, 2003), p. 195.

Remembering Emmet at midsummer blogiversary

I hope regular readers and occasional visitors to this blog are enjoying their summer. This post concludes our eleventh year, which included a temporary relocation to Boston and return to Washington, D.C. Here, one of my regular walks takes me by the statue of Irish patriot Robert Emmet.

Since 1966–the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising–the statue has been located in the 2400 block of Massachusetts Avenue, known as “Embassy Row.” It’s a 5-minute walk from the Embassy of Ireland on Sheridan Circle, and a block from the historic Woodrow Wilson House. As a second-term U.S. president, Wilson attended the June 1917 unveiling of the statue by Kerry-born sculpture Jerome Connor. “Heckling suffragettes” briefly disrupted the ceremony as they unrolled a banner that asked: “Why laud patriotic struggles of the past and suppress struggles for freedom at your gates?”[1]”Two Arrested With A Banner at Emmet Statue Exercises”, The Washington Post, June 29, 1917. American women secured the right to vote three years later as it became clear that Wilson was no supporter of Irish independence.

I continue to pursue my research about how American journalists reported the Irish struggle, both in Ireland and in America. More posts ahead. Thanks for your continued support of the blog. MH

 

References

References
↑1 ”Two Arrested With A Banner at Emmet Statue Exercises”, The Washington Post, June 29, 1917.

Arthur Gleason’s ‘inside’ reporting of post-Rising Ireland

(This post continues my exploration of how American journalists covered the Irish revolution. Visit the project landing page to access earlier work and resources. MH)

The United States’ April 1917 entry into the First World War had two immediate impacts on Ireland: increased scrutiny of Irish American efforts to support the revolution in ally Britain’s backyard, first exposed a year earlier during the Easter Rising; and more American newspaper correspondents based in London to cover the arrival and battlefield engagements of U.S. troops on the continent. In addition to their eastward journeys across the English Channel from Dover to Calais, these reporters also travelled westward across the Irish Sea, usually boarding the overnight mail boats from Holyhead to Dublin.

Arthur H. Gleason, date unknown

Arthur H. Gleason was among the first American journalists to assess post-Rising Irish nationalism within the British Empire. Born in 1878 in Newark, N.J., he graduated from Yale University in 1901 and joined the New York Tribune as a reporter. For 10 years from 1903 Gleason worked as a writer and editor at Cosmopolitan, Country Life in America, and Collier’s Weekly magazines. At the outbreak of the war in 1914, he joined the Red Cross and served with the Hector Munro Ambulance Corps in Belgium. Gleason was briefly captured by the Germans, but managed to escape and report his observations of the front lines, including several popular books about the war, notably Golden Lads, co-written with his wife.[1]“Arthur Gleason papers, 1863-1931”, MSS18382, Library of Congress, and multiple newspaper obituaries.

Gleason rejoined the Tribune in 1916 as a European correspondent as U.S. entry into the war became inevitable. Arthur Draper, another of the paper’s London correspondents, had covered the Rising in Dublin. He was “an outspoken proponent of including interpretation in foreign news reports,” rather than the just-the-facts presentation of the wire services.[2]Gerald L. Fetner (2017) Modern Foreign Correspondents after World War I: The New York Evening Post‘s David Lawrence and Simeon Strunsky, American Journalism, 34:3, pp. 313-332. Gleason wrote a series of articles for the Tribune‘s op-ed pages that aimed to educate readers about war conditions in Great Britain. He also produced articles on the same topic for Century Magazine. This work was collected nearly word-for-word as the book Inside the British Isles, published in spring 1917.

BRIEF VISIT

Gleason made what he described as a “brief visit” to Ireland, apparently before the end of 1916, to detail nationalist restiveness. “Sane opinion in Ireland is well aware that in any solution Ireland remains inside the federation of the British commonwealth,” he wrote, “but the status toward which the intelligent Irish work is that of a self-governing nation, like the free colonies.”[3]Arthur Gleason, Inside The British Isle (New York: The Century Co., 1917), p. 173.

Gleason’s analysis focused more on economic, market, and labor conditions than politics. He reported:

The real Irish question is poverty. … The slums of Irish cities are among the worst in Europe. … Many of the farms are too small for economic working, and what there is of them is not good enough soil. Much of the best tillage remains in the hands of landlords and is used for grazing instead of the production of crops. The hope of Ireland lies in trade unionism, education, and cooperation. Ireland’s real problem is to increase production and distribute prosperity.[4]Ibid, pp. 206-209, and “Poverty: The Real Irish Question”, New York Tribune, April 11, 1917.

Gleason viewed wealthy Irish Americans as an important source of this hope. At the time of his visit, he “found Ireland stimulated” by the news that Henry Ford proposed building a tractor factory in Cork city, near the industrialist’s ancestral homeland. The reporter continued:

If the very rumor (of Ford’s plant) has given cheer to an underpaid population, how much new hope will flow in if Irish Americans whose hearts bleed for Ireland will invest some of their money in Irish agriculture and industry. A few million dollars invested where the heart is will relieve a pressure on Ireland, which today is resulting in bad housing, undernourishment, overwork and an undue proportion of pauperism. The real Irish question is not solved by political wrangling and chronically jangled nerves inside the island, nor by hot temper at long distance. The Irish Americans who have planted the tradition of Ireland’s wrongs inside the United States are two generations out of date. … American money is not needed for nationalist propaganda. It is needed for agricultural and industrial development. Our rich Irish Americans can do an immense service to Ireland. They can aid to set her free. But not by parliamentary debates, speech-making campaigns, and pitiful abortive rebellions. They can set her free by standing security for land improvement, better housing, the purchase of machinery and fertilizer plants.

Gleason interviewed and quoted English social and economic academics such as Graham Wallas, Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, and Sir George G. Butler. He also discussed matters with Irish nationalist writers and journalists James Stephens and George William Russell, known by the pseudonym AE, and he quoted Ulster leader Sir Edward Carson. Gleason did not meet or mention Sinn Féin leaders Arthur Griffith, Eamon de Valera, and Michael Collins, who were incarcerated by the British at the time.

PRESS ASSESMENT

Gleason spoke with Dublin-born Lord Northcliffe, a powerful press baron of London’s Fleet Street. The reporter devoted one of his Tribune op-eds and a chapter of his book to a comparison of the British, Irish, and American press. He wrote:

I think the little independent spirited Irish weeklies are admirable. They sass the censor and the Lord Lieutenant and the (Dublin) Castle. I met some of the editors—poor men and honest, editing and writing papers in which they believe. They seem to me worth all the sleek, timid New York crowd put together. … A man believes something hard, and, being Irish, he has the knack of statement, so he publishes a paper.[5]Inside, p. 263, and “A Batch of Papers”, New York Tribune, May 10, 1917.

New York Tribune headline of Gleason’s May 10, 1917, piece on the press.

Privately, Gleason shared drafts of his Irish reporting with key sources for their approval before publication, a common practice at the time but anathema to most modern journalists. His regular correspondents included Butler and Lord Eustace Percy, a British diplomat.

“Butler has handed me your article on Ireland: neither of us feel quite comfortable about making ourselves responsible for it to the extent of giving it special facilities for transmission to America as it stands at present,” Percy wrote to Gleason, then living in Hove, Sussex, on the English Channel coastline 65 miles south of London. “My criticism of your article is not that it is hostile to this country (though I think that is the net effect of it) but that it is not really calculated to enlighten America. … You are carrying coals to Newscastle in writing for America sentimental impressionism about great political problems.”[6]Percy to Gleason, Dec. 28, 1916, Arthur Gleason papers.

Gleason replied two days later.[7]Gleason to Percy, Dec. 30, 1916, Arthur Gleason papers. He agreed to make some “modifications” to the content and withdraw other passages from his Tribune and Century dispatches; but not from the book, which he argued provided fuller context of the relationship between the two islands. “I want the article to be passed,” Gleason wrote, an acknowledgement of the realities of war-time censorship in Britain, which would soon to be duplicated in America. “I think you will agree I have met you seven eighths of the way.”

Gleason bristled at Percy’s charge of sentimental impressionism. “That which is excellent in Belgium and Serbia does not become ‘sentimental’ or selfish in Poland or Ireland. It merely remains the same principal for which French and English (and soon Americas) are fighting—the right of self-government.”

MISSING CONTENT

Gleason’s reporting from Ireland was subject to further editing. Soon after the publication of Inside The British Isles, he wrote to Douglas Z. Doty, editor at the Century publishing company, to complain that “heavy hunks” of content totaling 16 pages had been cut from the manuscript. “Everything that explains the state of mind, everything that voices the young men, has disappeared,” Gleason complained. “Poems, quotations, the statement of a young rebel to me, all have disappeared.”[8]Gleason to Doty, June 4, 1917, Arthur Gleason papers.

Praise for Gleason’s book came from papers within the British Isles. Belfast Newsletter, April 1, 1918.

He questioned whether the missing material resulted from “editorial exigency” in New York or censorship by the British Foreign Office, which he claimed had approved the manuscript. The missing material, according to Gleason, included quotes from several Irish political leaders, among them Helena Malony, a 1916 Easter Rising participant and member of Cumann na mBan, the Irish republican women’s paramilitary organization. Malony’s feminism and labor activism were especially relevant to Gleason’s broader social and economic interests.

Also missing from the book, Gleason wrote, were his analysis of the Dublin rebellion; a tribute to the Gaelic League and similar Irish organizations; a poem written by executed Rising leader Pádraic Pearse; and references to The White Headed Boy, a 1916 comedy drama by Irish playwright Lennox Robinson.

Nevertheless, Inside the British Isles won praise on both sides of the Atlantic. “It is welcome as a contribution to the discussion which is not merely of interest to Ireland, but to thousands of Irish well-wishers and sympathizers in this country,” said one American review.[9]”The Irish Problem”, Buffalo (N.Y.) News, Aug. 27, 1917. An advertisement in the Irish press (image) collected several favorable reviews.

SCUTTLED INVESTIGATION

Gleason returned to America as Irish separatists launched a guerilla war against the British military and police in Ireland. He continued to work on labor and economic issues through the New York-based Bureau of Industrial Research and with social reformer Paul Underwood Kellogg. They co-authored British Labor and the War in 1919. But Gleason’s insights about Ireland were called upon again in late 1920.

Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the weekly liberal journal the Nation, organized the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland on behalf of pro-Irish interests. He invited dozens of U.S. senators, state governors, big city mayors, college presidents and professors, religious leaders, newspaper editors, and other prominent citizens to form and oversee the eight-member panel of inquiry, which was not affiliated with the U.S. government. Villard and his supporters also intended to send a five-member investigative team to Ireland, including Gleason.

Other members of the proposed delegation included:

  • Major Oliver P. Newman, a journalist, sociologist, former Washington, D.C. commissioner and U.S. Army veteran of the Great War;
  • Rev. Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister, socialist political candidate, and publisher of the World Tomorrow;
  • James H. Mauer, a progressive labor leader and president of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor; and
  • Robert Morse Lovett, dean of the University of Chicago.

For several weeks in November and December 1920 the New York Tribune, Gleason’s former employer, and other American newspapers published conflicting reports about whether the group would, or would not, be issued passports to visit Ireland; based on the approval or objections of the U.S. or British governments. The dispute continued as the commission, which included Newman, Thomas, and Mauer, opened public hearings on conditions in Ireland at a Washington hotel.

Privately, Gleason was skeptical of the investigative delegation to which he was publicly named. “Unless the strongest kind of commission is sent to England and Ireland, it will be better to send none at all,” he wrote to Villard. “To send a half dozen unknown or slightly known persons will injure the cause of good-will you have at heart. The work will be discredited, or treated with indifference and irony.”[10]Gleason to Villard, Nov. 24, 1920, in Oswald Garrison Villard Papers, 1872-1949 (MS Am 1323), Harvard University, Box 37, Irish Commission, 1920-1921.

Gleason subsequently complained there were too many socialists in the proposed group, with “no bishop, no judge, no ‘big’ business man. So idealistic a commission will not avail.”[11]Ibid. “Since writing the above…” handwritten on same letter.

The proposed delegation scuttled by the time the commission concluded its hearings in January 1921. A month later another group of American investigators travelled to Ireland as part of an overlapping effort called the American Committee for Relief in Ireland. This group’s account of distress in Ireland was released within days of the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland report based on the Washington hearing testimony. Pro-Irish supporters cheered the two narratives critical of British rule; the British government condemned both reports as exaggerations and fabrications; and U.S. officials mostly tried to remain neutral and outside the fray.[12]See my earlier posts American investigators visit Ireland, February 1921, and American visitors describe ‘Distress in Ireland,’ April 1921.

EARLY DEATH

Though unstated in his letter to Villard, Gleason’s reluctance to join the proposed Irish delegation also might have been based on his skepticism of Irish American political meddling in the conflict, though he encouraged economic investment, as noted above. In his 1917 book, Gleason wrote:

The irreconcilable Irish in America had seemed to me a set of men “scrapping” volubly for the sake of words and dissension.  … (It is) the bitterness of Roman Catholic pulpits in Boston and Chicago, the railings of mass meetings in New York, the irresponsible perorations of Irish-American politicians that chiefly threatens the future of Ireland. … (Progressive British people) cannot and will not accept from America the last and worst doctrine of reaction.[13]Inside, pp. 173, 191.

It does not appear that Gleason wrote more about Ireland after 1917. The island was partitioned in 1921 as the war with Britain ended and devolved into the year-long Irish civil war. The revolutionary period that began at Easter 1916 ended in May 1923.

Gleason died of meningitis on Dec. 30, 1923, two weeks after his 45th birthday. He is buried in Washington, D.C.

References

References
↑1 “Arthur Gleason papers, 1863-1931”, MSS18382, Library of Congress, and multiple newspaper obituaries.
↑2 Gerald L. Fetner (2017) Modern Foreign Correspondents after World War I: The New York Evening Post‘s David Lawrence and Simeon Strunsky, American Journalism, 34:3, pp. 313-332.
↑3 Arthur Gleason, Inside The British Isle (New York: The Century Co., 1917), p. 173.
↑4 Ibid, pp. 206-209, and “Poverty: The Real Irish Question”, New York Tribune, April 11, 1917.
↑5 Inside, p. 263, and “A Batch of Papers”, New York Tribune, May 10, 1917.
↑6 Percy to Gleason, Dec. 28, 1916, Arthur Gleason papers.
↑7 Gleason to Percy, Dec. 30, 1916, Arthur Gleason papers.
↑8 Gleason to Doty, June 4, 1917, Arthur Gleason papers.
↑9 ”The Irish Problem”, Buffalo (N.Y.) News, Aug. 27, 1917.
↑10 Gleason to Villard, Nov. 24, 1920, in Oswald Garrison Villard Papers, 1872-1949 (MS Am 1323), Harvard University, Box 37, Irish Commission, 1920-1921.
↑11 Ibid. “Since writing the above…” handwritten on same letter.
↑12 See my earlier posts American investigators visit Ireland, February 1921, and American visitors describe ‘Distress in Ireland,’ April 1921.
↑13 Inside, pp. 173, 191.

American reporting of Irish independence

I’m developing new posts about American journalists who covered the Irish revolution. I urged site visitors to explore the project landing page to read my earlier work. You’ll find there:

  • Centenary year “revisited” posts covering events from 1918 to 1923.
  • Special projects: More detailed explorations of individual journalists.
  • Sources & links, including Irish-American newspapers, period books, and reports.

Back to D.C. — thanks New England archivists & librarians

The Burns Library holds BC’s Irish and Irish American collections.

I’m back in Washington, D.C., after 10 months in Boston for my wife’s Nieman Foundation fellowship at Harvard. It was a great experience for both of us. I visited several libraries and archives in the region to research my book on American journalists in revolutionary Ireland. In appreciation, I’ve listed the institutions and two individuals below, followed by more photos:

  • Boston College: Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., and John J. Burns libraries.
    • Thanks to Guy Beiner, Sullivan Chair of BC’s Irish Studies program, Connolly House.
  • Boston Public Library: “Irish Papers” collection and newspaper microfilm.
  • Cambridge Public Library and associated Minuteman Library Network.
  • Colby College (Waterville, Maine): James A. Healy Collection at Miller Library.
    • Thanks to Patricia Burdick, head of special collections and archives.
  • Harvard: Widener, Lamont, Houghton, and Divinity School libraries, and
    • Radcliffe Institute: Schlesinger Library.
  • Tufts University: Tisch Library.
  • University of Massachusetts at Boston: Joseph P. Healy Library.
  • Yale University (New Haven, Conn.): Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Plaque at the entrance of Harvard’s Widener Library describes the fate of its namesake.

Bates Hall, the main reading room at Boston Public Library.

Hallway leading to special collections and archives at Yale University.

Miller Library at Colby College in Maine.

U.S. press opinions on end of the Irish Civil War

In May 1923, U.S. newspaper editorial pages assessed Ireland’s 11-month-old civil war as Éamon de Valera and recalcitrant republicans took the final halting steps toward ending their insurgency against the Irish Free State. “Strong hope that peace nears in Ireland is voiced by American editors,” began an “editorial digest” from more than a dozen dailies. (Clicking the image will enlarge it in most browsers.) Below it are opinions from three other papers after the IRA’s May 24 order to “dump arms,” officially ending the hostilities.

Periodic violence and political turmoil continued to trouble Ireland, but the revolutionary period that began in 1912 with the arming of Ulster and Nationalist volunteers had finally ended. As important, the civil war permanently shifted Irish American attention from the politics of the old country to assimilation in their adopted country, though affection remained for the homeland.

From the Evening Star, Washington, D.C., May 8, 1923.

The Buffalo (N.Y.) Enquirer compared the situation in Ireland to the U.S. Civil War, which ended nearly 60 years earlier.

If de Valera is seeking an example for the future he may find it in America where all are friends of Ireland. Our own civil war was fought with all the bitterness of Ireland’s civil war: but when the Confederacy laid down its arms, it did so with no thought of taking up arms again after a period of recouperation. It kept alive no purpose to take up arms again. To that noble action this country owes its present peace, unity, prosperity, and greatness. It will serve Ireland as magnificently as it has served the United States.[1]”Peace In Ireland”, The Buffalo Enquirer, May 31, 1923.

The Birmingham (Ala.) News, which encouraged anti-Catholic and nativist opposition to de Valera’s April 1920 visit to the city, remained hostile to the republican leader:

Lack of common sense has been de Valera’s besetting sin–or was it ambition? … For de Valera’s ambition or idealism or lack of common sense the greensward of Ireland has been drenched in the blood of Irishmen–and women–shed by other Irishmen. … It is well that Mr. de Valera has finally admitted that he cannot impose his will upon the majority of the Irish–but at what ghastly price has he become convinced! The wraiths of the unnecessary dead should attend him always; the sorrows of mothers who have lost their sons–at his command; the wailings of helpless children who are so by his devotion to his ambition in the fade of the majority; the moans of the widows–made so at his behest–should ring in his ears as the tolling of some ceaseless, solemn knell.[2]”De Valera At Last Bows To Inevitable; He Orders A Cessation of Hostilities”, The Birmingham News, May 31, 1923.

While heartened that de Valera and Irish republicans had finally decided to stop fighting, the Decatur (Ill.) Herald noted other roadblocks remained for Ireland’s path forward:

The chaos brought by the Republicans afforded exactly the opportunity desired by the Communists, including large groups of strongly organized workers. The Communists will scarcely cease their activities because the Republicans have decided to become good citizens. Finally, of course, there is Ulster, a problem as relentless and troublesome as ever. If the Free State does succeed in overcoming all of the difficulties thrown in its way … it will be entitled to credit for a remarkable achievement. It is not yet time for the expression of unreserved optimism.[3]”It Comes Late”, Decatur (Ill.) Herald, May 30, 1923.

See my American Reporting of Irish Independence series.

References

References
↑1 ”Peace In Ireland”, The Buffalo Enquirer, May 31, 1923.
↑2 ”De Valera At Last Bows To Inevitable; He Orders A Cessation of Hostilities”, The Birmingham News, May 31, 1923.
↑3 ”It Comes Late”, Decatur (Ill.) Herald, May 30, 1923.

Women journalists offer perspectives on Northern Ireland

Boston College highlighted three women journalists from three generations of the Troubles in Northern Ireland at the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. They were:

  • Susan McKay, a teenager in 1972 when her native Derry became the center of international attention on Bloody Sunday. She established her reputation for fearless reporting of the loyalist community during the Drumcree conflicts in Portadown in the late 1990s, and post-agreement coverage. She has authored Northern Protestants – On Shifting Ground, 2021, Bear In Mind These Dead, 2007, and other work.
  • Freya McClements, Northern editor of The Irish Times, 17 when the Good Friday Agreement was reached in 1998. Her post-agreement work includes Children of the Troubles, 2020, co-written with RTÉ broadcaster Joe Duffy. The book details the stories of 186 youth aged 16 and under who died in the conflict between 1969 and 2006, including some killed accidentally and not part of earlier Troubles’ death lists.
  • Lyra McKee, a 29-year-old up-and-coming journalist killed during 2019 rioting in the Creggan area of Derry. Now subject of a new documentary film, Lyra, McKee helped call attention to high post-agreement teen suicide rates in the North and LGBTQ advocacy.

The 92-minute Lyra is a tough to watch, in part because viewers are drawn so intimately into McKee’s life through an abundance of archival video dating to her childhood in Belfast’s Ardoyne neighborhood, a working-class, mostly Catholic and republican enclave. We see her grow up, blossom with professional and personal promise, then get shot as senselessly as earlier Troubles deaths.

Authorities have attributed McKee’s murder to an IRA splinter group. Several people have been arrested but nobody has been convicted of the crime.

McKee was represented at BC by her surviving partner, Sara Canning. She said the best way to honor McKee’s memory is to contribute to the Lyra McKee Journalism Training Bursary at the Centre for Investigative Journalism. And she encouraged wide viewership of the movie.

Here’s the official trailer:

McClements, the Times editor, said there has been “peace but not reconciliation” in Northern Ireland over the last quarter century. She noted that most schools remain segregated by religion and dozens of “peace walls” are still required to separate sectarian neighborhoods. Brexit has created “a new fault line” of tension in the North.

McClements predicted that the Democratic Unionist Party will rejoin the Northern Ireland Assembly, which it has boycotted for over a year, perhaps by this fall. If not, she said, the British and Irish governments will begin to devise an alternative, which could leave the DUP and other unionist hardlines even more in the cold. Direct rule from London is not an option, she said.

Adding to the tension is the British government’s determination to pass a “Troubles Legacy and Reconciliation Bill,” which seems to have support only from the Tory majority and military veterans groups. The measure, which blocks enquiries of past events and even destroys records, is opposed by Northern politicians, the European Union, the United Nations, and the United States. McClements expects Parliament will pass the measure, which will then be targeted for a long grind of court challenges.

The 1972 civil rights demonstration in Derry, Northern Ireland, that became Bloody Sunday.

McKay said she had to learn to rein in her aggressiveness to get the story when she noticed the fear in other journalists also covering the loyalist mobs at Drumcree.  She said that international press coverage of the Troubles “on the whole told the story properly,” though some visiting journalists “looking for certain images were disappointed if they didn’t get it.”

McKay declined to speculate about the immediate future of Northern Ireland politics due to her current role as ombudsman for the Press Council of Ireland.

BC’s two-day symposium began with Belfast-born author Louise Kennedy reading from her acclaimed debut novel, Trespasses, about a romance across the sectarian divide in 1970s. A previous symposium at BC reconsidered terrorism in Northern Ireland. The latest event concluded the 2022-23 academic year at the school’s Irish Studies program under the leadership of historian Guy Beiner.

The D.C. death of an Irish ‘stormy petrel’, April 1923

Laurence Ginnell, Library of Congress photo

By mid-April 1923 the Irish Free State army regularly routed anti-government forces. Liam Lynch, the IRA’s chief of staff, was killed on April 10; Austin Stack, his deputy, was captured a few days later. Talk of a ceasefire and the end of Ireland’s 10-month-old civil war was in the air, and in the press.

But the death by natural causes of Irish politician Laurence Ginnell[1]See Dictionary of Irish Biography entry. in a Washington, D.C. hotel room also contributed to the demoralization of the “irregulars.” Since August 1922, the 71-year-old served as envoy to the United States for Éamon de Valera’s unrecognized Irish republic. Ginnell had no real diplomatic status, and his stature was diminished after a failed attempt to take control of the Free State’s consulate office in New York City.

“He was in apparent good health earlier today, and when a hotel attendant called to deliver a message said he would attend to it later. On going back he was found dead,” the Evening Star reported on page 13.[2]”Irish Republican Leader Dies Here”, Evening Star, Washington, D.C., April 17, 1923. Historians have suggested Ginnell’s health suffered from the cumulative impacts of several imprisonments earlier in his life.

Ginnell died at D.C.’s Hotel Lafayette, about two miles west of the U.S. Capitol. Three Aprils earlier a dinner honoring de Valera, then on his 18-month tour of America, was staged in the hotel’s ballroom. From November 1920 through January 1921 the Lafayette became headquarters of the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, a non-U.S. government body created by pro-Irish interests to generate publicity and political support for the declared Irish republic. Ginnell’s combative and argumentative nature emerged at the outset of his Dec. 15, 1920, testimony before the commission, :

I cannot go into this thing unless I am allowed to state the conditions. The evidence I have to give you is at your disposal only on the condition that it is not to be made use of in any recommendations regarding Ireland. We in Ireland have settled our own government on the basis of your President’s own statements. We have applied the right of self-determination to our own country. Indeed, I will not go behind the present status of the Republican Government in Ireland today. Indeed, I will not give any evidence whatever unless I am assured that no effort will be made to go behind the Irish Republican Government, the only constitutional government in Ireland today. And to attempt to discuss the right of Ireland to her independence is to attempt to re-establish the English Government where she has lost all power and respect whatsoever. If I get the assurance that that is not your intention, then I will sit down and begin my evidence immediately.[3]See Ginnell’s full testimony, pages 462-505.

The Washington Herald described Ginnell as “one of Sinn Fein’s most militant spirits” upon his arrival in the city earlier in 1920.[4]”Notes By A Washington Observer”, The Washington Herald, July 29, 1920. In coverage of his 1923 death, the American, Irish, and British press noted Ginnell’s unique status of having been elected as an Irish Parliamentary Party member in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, and as a Sinn Féin republican in Dáil Éireann. The irascible Ginnell held the distinction of being ejected from both legislative bodies.

Following his 1920 American Commission appearance, Ginnell represented the Irish republic in South America. His telegramed vote against the Anglo-Irish Treaty was not accepted, but he became, at de Valera’s request, the only opposition member to sit in the Dáil. It was because of his relationship with de Valera that John Devoy’s Gaelic American offered a critical, if respectful, assessment of Ginnell’s career.[5]See “Ginnell, De Valera’s Envoy in America, Dies Suddenly“, The Gaelic American, April 28, 1923.

Ginnell entered politics during the Plan of Campaign agitation of the Irish Land War in the late 1880s, “the stormy petrel of Parnellite politics,” according to press accounts. He was the co-founder of the Irish Literary Society (1892) and the author of several books, including The brehon laws: a legal guide (1894), The doubtful grant of Ireland by Pope Adrian IV to King Henry II (1899), and Land and liberty (1908) .[6]DIB, linked in Note 1.

Hotel Lafayette in Washington D.C., between 1910 and 1926. Library of Congress photo.

The first of three funeral Masses for Ginnell was held at D.C.’s St. Matthew’s Catholic Church, 40 years later the site of slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s service. Ginnell’s body was then conveyed to New York City, where another Mass occurred at the Carmelite Catholic church on East 28th Street.

During the Irish revolutionary period, the Manhattan church’s friars sheltered Irish revolutionaries on the run from British authorities, including de Valera. They also stashed part of a cache of 600 Thompson submachine guns, wrapped in burlap sacks and bound for Ireland during the war.[7]”The End of an Era at Bellevue and a Nearby Church”, The New York Times, June 27, 2007.

In a telegram to Alice Ginnell (née King), de Valera described his departed colleague as “one of the most indefatigable workers for Ireland.”[8]”Delegations From Many States At Ginnell Funeral”, Buffalo Morning Express, April 21, 1923. But only a week earlier de Valera effectively removed Ginnell from Irish activities in America, “an unfortunate and sad end to a long career.”[9]Dr. Paul Hughes, a Mullingar-based journalist and historian, in the “Laurence Ginnell–Part 2: from Ireland to America” podcast from the Westmeath County Council Decade of Centenaries, … Continue reading

Finally, the widow accompanied her husband’s body back to Ireland, contrary to an incorrect press report that Ginnell was buried in New York. Major Michael A Kelly, veteran of the Irish American 69th New York Infantry Regiment, represented De Valera at the May 1, 1923, service at the Carmelite church on Whitefriars Street, Dublin. Interment followed in Ginnell’s native Delvin, County Westmeath.

The Irish Civil War ended before the month concluded.

References

References
↑1 See Dictionary of Irish Biography entry.
↑2 ”Irish Republican Leader Dies Here”, Evening Star, Washington, D.C., April 17, 1923.
↑3 See Ginnell’s full testimony, pages 462-505.
↑4 ”Notes By A Washington Observer”, The Washington Herald, July 29, 1920.
↑5 See “Ginnell, De Valera’s Envoy in America, Dies Suddenly“, The Gaelic American, April 28, 1923.
↑6 DIB, linked in Note 1.
↑7 ”The End of an Era at Bellevue and a Nearby Church”, The New York Times, June 27, 2007.
↑8 ”Delegations From Many States At Ginnell Funeral”, Buffalo Morning Express, April 21, 1923.
↑9 Dr. Paul Hughes, a Mullingar-based journalist and historian, in the “Laurence Ginnell–Part 2: from Ireland to America” podcast from the Westmeath County Council Decade of Centenaries, Jan. 24, 2022.