Category Archives: Journalism

Praying and ‘knocking heads together’ to end Irish Civil War

The archbishop’s story that “moved hundreds to tears” might have been a wee bit of malarkey.

Archbishop George W. Mundelein, speaking at Chicago’s 1923 St. Patrick’s Day banquet, described a secret meeting between Éamon de Valera, leader of the republican faction opposed to the fledgling Irish Free State, and General Richard Mulcahy, chief of government forces during the Irish Civil War. The prelate said the two combatants embraced each other as they met at a Dublin retreat house, then got down on their knees together to pray the “Hail Mary” and this litany:

 “St. Patrick; apostle of Ireland, pray for us; St. Bridgit, patroness of Ireland, pray for; All ye holy men and women who died for Ireland, pray for us.”

The archbishop assured the Ancient Order of Hibernians and its Ladies Auxiliary that the two sides were “groping for some way out of their difficulty,” which he suggested could be ended if only some strong man had the courage to “knock their heads together” in common and united effort. His story “moved hundreds to tears,” according to the news account. He was “the only speaker at the celebration who had the courage to make reference to present day conditions in the Emerald Isle.” 

The next day’s Chicago Tribune reported the story on page 5 (see below), but without the head knocking quote.[1]Mundelein Tells How Foes In Erin Knelt Together”, Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1923. The Associated Press wired its version of the story, with the quote, to other U.S. secular daily newspapers. The National Catholic Welfare Council news service distributed this version to Catholic weeklies, which published the story through the rest of March.[2]”Declares De Valera Knelt With Mulcahy”, The New York Times, March 19, 1923; “De Valera a And Mulcahy Reported Friends Again”, Evening Star, Washington, D.C., March 19, 1923; … Continue reading A brief version of the story from Central News also appeared in the Irish Examiner,[3]Mulcahy & De Valera, American Archbishop’s Statement”, Irish Examiner, March 20, 1923. but the Free State government denied it the next day.[4]”Praying Story Denied”, Belfast News-Letter, March 21, 1923.

Archbishop Mundelein attributed the story to one of his recent visitors, “the only person who witnessed this meeting,” but did not name his source. His informant must have been Monsignor John Rogers, a County Wexford native and pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in San Francisco active in Irish republican affairs.[5]”Monsignor John Rogers Drops Dead At Funeral”, The Sacramento Bee, May 6, 1935.

Undated photo.

A week before St. Patrick’s Day 1923, Monsignor Rogers cabled the Irish Independent to claim credit for the Sept. 8, 1922, meeting between De Valera and Mulcahy. In February 1923, Free State President William T. Cosgrave told the Independent that “a high church dignitary from another country” helped arrange the meeting, which did not yield a peace settlement.[6]”Monsignor Rogers’ Part”, Irish Independent, March 13, 1923.

De Valera’s personal papers at University College Dublin contain “correspondence between Monsignor John Rogers, Ernie O’Malley (Acting Assistant Chief of Staff), de Valera and Eamon Donnelly (‘Mr D’) on the organization of a meeting, through the auspices of Monsignor Rogers, between de Valera and General Richard Mulcahy and the issuing of a form of safe conduct for Mulcahy. Also includes a list of six propositions (8 September 1922, 1p) submitted by Monsignor Rogers to de Valera, as a ‘basis of action or agreement’ (3–8 September 1922 & February 1923, 14 items).” I have not reviewed this material, which is not available online.[7]Eamon de Valera Papers P150, UCD Archives finding guide page 535.

Monsignor Rogers, in an Oct. 8, 1922, letter to Joseph McGarrity of Philadelphia, wrote that he had dinned the previous evening in Chicago with Archbishop Edward Joseph Hanna of San Francisco and Archbishop Mundelein, whom he describe as “a true friend of De Valera.” McGarrity, who published the Irish Press from March 1918 until May 1922, was a key de Valera supporter before and after the Anglo-Irish Treaty split. The priest reported the Chicago archbishop had just read “the Chief’s last communication” with interest.

At the time, the American press was reporting the Free State army had intercepted multiple correspondence from de Valera. One letter said he had no influence over armed republicans. It also suggested that even if republicans could somehow “overthrow” the provisional government “they would themselves be ousted by the people at the next election.”[8]”De Valera Is Discouraged Over Affairs”, The Fresno (California) Morning Republican, Oct. 15, 1922.

Mundelein in 1924.

Archbishop Mundelein, 50 in 1923, was the American-born son of an Irish mother and a German father. He became archbishop in 1915. In 1921, he was listed on the national council of the American Committee for Relief in Ireland, and he also served on the executive committee of the committee’s Illinois delegation. The prelate’s 1923 St. Patrick’s Day “story”, by then six months old, clearly was intended to give hope to Irish American Catholics, who had become disgusted and disillusioned with the civil war. His description of the two combatants seeking the intercessions of familiar Irish saints probably was overly greened malarkey, but certainly suited the occasion and the church.

The civil war ended two months later. Archbishop Mundelein was elevated to cardinal the following year. The finding guide of his archive lists a 1927 Christmas letter from de Valera to the prelate and an undated photo of the two of them. The archbishop died in 1939, four years after Monsignor Rogers. A newspaper obituary described the San Francisco priest as “a personal friend” of de Valera.[9]”Rogers Drops Dead”, Sacramento Bee, May 6, 1935.

You could say he once was in the room where it didn’t happen.

(See all the posts in my American Reporting of Irish Independence series.)

Chicago Tribune coverage of Archbishop George W. Mundelein’s St. Patrick’s Day address to the Ancient Order of Hibernians, left, and a photo of that day’s Mass at St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago. (See my 2019 photo essay of the Chicago church, including modern sanctuary.)

References

References
1 Mundelein Tells How Foes In Erin Knelt Together”, Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1923.
2 ”Declares De Valera Knelt With Mulcahy”, The New York Times, March 19, 1923; “De Valera a And Mulcahy Reported Friends Again”, Evening Star, Washington, D.C., March 19, 1923; “De Valera And Mulchy Meet And Pray Together For Peace And Protection In Ireland”, The Pittsburgh Catholic, March 29, 1923; “De Valera Meets And Prays With General Mulcahy”, The Catholic Advocate, Wichita, Kansas, March 31, 1923.
3 Mulcahy & De Valera, American Archbishop’s Statement”, Irish Examiner, March 20, 1923.
4 ”Praying Story Denied”, Belfast News-Letter, March 21, 1923.
5 ”Monsignor John Rogers Drops Dead At Funeral”, The Sacramento Bee, May 6, 1935.
6 ”Monsignor Rogers’ Part”, Irish Independent, March 13, 1923.
7 Eamon de Valera Papers P150, UCD Archives finding guide page 535.
8 ”De Valera Is Discouraged Over Affairs”, The Fresno (California) Morning Republican, Oct. 15, 1922.
9 ”Rogers Drops Dead”, Sacramento Bee, May 6, 1935.

Police shooting adds to Northern Ireland tensions

UPDATE 3: (Feb. 27)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has arrived in England for talks with British Prime Minister Ursula von der Leyen and King Charles III. An agreement on resolving the Northern Ireland protocol is expected. Whether the deal is accepted by the Northern Ireland’s DUP and Tory Euroskeptics is another matter. I will report the outcome in a fresh post. MH

UPDATE 2: (Feb. 26)

Three more men (a total of six) have been arrested in connection with the shooting of DCI Caldwell, who remains in critical condition. People across County Tyrone demonstrated over the weekend to show their support for the officer and opposition to any any return “to the bad old days” of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. … A deal on the Northern Ireland protocol is said to be tantalizingly close. As is typical with provincial politics and with Brexit, however, it just as easily could be scuttled at any moment.

UPDATE 1: (Feb. 23)

Three men have been arrested in connection with the attempted murder of Police Service of Northern Ireland Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell. In an online statement, PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Mark McEwan said: “Our main line of enquiry is that violent dissident republicans carried out this vile attack and within that a primary focus is on the New IRA.”

Republican dissidents “have long tried – and consistently failed – to escalate a violent campaign” in the north, The Guardian reported. “It is not about Brexit, the Northern Ireland protocol or the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. It is not about sparking a Troubles 2.0. It is about showing they exist.”

But Brexit, the protocol, and the GFA anniversary are part of the mix. Here’s an analysis of the trade talks from The New York Times.

ORIGINAL POST: (Feb. 21)

The shooting of an off-duty police officer in Omagh, Northern Ireland, could disrupt efforts by the United Kingdom and European Union to reach a revised trade agreement for the province. Such a deal is being tied to reopening of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government, which has been shuttered for a year.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the Feb. 22 gun attack, “but politicians from all sides agreed that one of the small IRA splinter groups still active in the U.K. region must be to blame,” Politico reporter Shawn Pogatchnik wrote in a early dispatch from Dublin. Such an assignment of blame seems premature, perhaps irresponsible. (Pogatchnik, a U.S. native, has covered the island of Ireland for more than 30 years.)

The officer remained alive at the time of this post. The last murder of a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer was in 2011; the last shooting of one was in 2017, according to the BBC.

The Democratic Unionist Party withdrew from the Northern Ireland Assembly last February in protest of how Brexit treats the flow of goods in and out of the province. Unionist say the arrangement, or “protocol,” treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the U.K. by imposing E.U. rules on goods crossing the border with the Republic of Ireland. This is the only land interface between the U.K. and the E.U. The compromise was conceived and signed off by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as part of his pledge to “get Brexit done” three years ago and has caused problems ever since.  Many residents and observers (including U.S. officials) worry that a “hard border” between the North and Republic will spark a return to the sectarian violence of the Troubles.

U.K. and E.U. negotiators this week said they were within sight of a new protocol, but unionist remained skeptical.

The shooting and the trade talks are both developing stories. This post will be updated over the next few days. Email subscribers should check the website for the latest details. MH

Ruth Russell’s ‘Ireland’ at Harvard library

I’ve written several pieces about Ruth Russell, the Chicago Daily News correspondent who in 1919 covered the early months of the Irish War of Independence. Notably, she lived in the Dublin slums to report about poor women and children. On her return to America, Russell expanded her newspaper dispatches into the 1920 book What’s the matter with Ireland? As an advocate for Irish independence, she protested with other women outside the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., and testified before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland.[1]See Beginnings; Correspondent; Activist; Witness; Afterward; and Ruth Russell remembered in stone … 57 years later

Harvard’s copy of the book.

Russell’s 103-year-old book is available online. Until recently, the only hard copy I’d seen was requested from storage at the Library of Congress in Washington. But I found What’s the matter with Ireland? while exploring the stacks at Harvard’s flagship Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library.

Harvard acquired the book on Oct. 7, 1920, according to the date stamp on the copyright page. Borrowers checked out the book 10 times during its first year in the library, as recorded by the due dates stamped on a schedule pasted to the inside back cover. These dates are shown below with select Irish-related news and other content from that day’s Boston Globe. The mix of local and international events offers a thumbnail sketch of events during the last year of the war as Harvard students or faculty read Russell’s book.

  • Nov. 20, 1920: John Derham, town commissioner of Balbriggan, and Francis Hackett, associate editor of The New Republic, testified at the American Committee on Conditions in Ireland hearings in Washington, D.C. Russell testified to the commission on Dec. 15, 1920. (See image of the Globe’s story below.)
  • Jan. 8, 1921: The censorship trial of Capuchin chaplain Fr. Dominic O’Connor, charged with making statements “likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty,” opened in Dublin. Convicted and sentenced to prison later that month, he was released on general amnesty upon ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in January 1922.
  • Jan. 21, 1921: Lord Mayor of Cork Donal O’Callaghan, a stowaway to America after the December 1920 British rampage in the city, said he would surrender to U.S. immigration authorities.
  • Feb. 9, 1921: British Prime Minister David Lloyd George said he offered Ireland a greater measure of home rule than Gladstone or Asquith. “But they won’t take it. … They must have an Irish Republic, an Irish Army, an Irish Navy. They won’t get it.”
  • Feb. 19, 1921: The Moore & McCormack cargo line advertised a Feb. 23 sailing from Boston to Belfast, Cork, and Dublin. The service, which began in September 1919 from Philadelphia, was citied by Sinn Féin as an example of Ireland’s commercial independence. The route was discontinued in 1925.[2]See An American reporters in 1920 Ireland: Industry.
  • March 16, 1921: Fr. John W. Meehan of Castlebar, County Mayo, continued to address local groups interested in Irish independence and conditions in the country. He arrived in Boston two months earlier.
  • April 4, 1921: A front-page Associated Press report said that “competent observers” believed prospects for peace in Ireland had brightened since St. Patrick’s Day.
  • May 11, 1921: More than 300 delegates representing 146 councils of the Massachusetts State Council of the Knights of Columbus adopted a resolution favoring immediate recognition of the Republic of Ireland. … “Pure linen” handkerchiefs imported from Belfast were on sale at 29 cents each at Chandler & Co. on Tremont Street.
  • Oct. 4, 1921: The Associated Press reported that “numerous newspapers writers and photographers” were permitted to observe an Irish Republican Army battalion in the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin. “Throughout Ireland drilling and inspections of this kind have been proceeding since the truce was signed (in July),” the story said.
  • Oct. 25, 1921: Éamon de Valera’s message to Pope Benedict XV regarding “formally proclaimed” independence of Ireland stirred “the first real crisis” in negotiations toward a peace agreement with Great Britain, the AP reported. The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed Dec. 6, 1921.

It’s unclear if any of the Harvard borrowers paid the 5 cents per day fine for returning the book after the stamped due date. Interest in Russell’s book waned after the treaty. The next three due dates were May 19, 1931; Sept. 18, 1946; and May 28, 1955. The book remained shelved for 41 years, then was checked out three more times in April and May 1996.

Subsequent activity–if any–was recorded on electronic library systems and cannot be retrieved, according to the librarian who checked out the book for me. I was curious whether there was activity at the centenary of the Irish revolution and 100th anniversary of the book’s publication.

The Boston Globe published this story about Russell’s Dec. 15, 1920, testimony before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland. The paper did not review her book, ‘What’s the matter with Ireland?’, released earlier in the year. The book was added to Harvard’s library in October 1920.

The online Quercus Rare Books offers an original hardcover inscribed by Russell for $250. It says: “To the President of the Irish Republic Eamon de Valera, with best wishes from a citizen of the United States.” Below the inscription is the stamp from de Valera’s library. De Valera provided a Jan. 29, 1920, letter praising Russell’s work, which appears as front matter in the book. Quercus also offers an unsigned first edition in “very good plus” condition (below “Near Fine” and “Fine”) for $100.

The back pages of Russell’s book contained advertisements for three other contemporary Irish titles from publisher Devin-Adair: The Invincible Irish, by J.C. Walsh; Why God Loves The Irish, by Humphry J. Desmond; and The Irish Rebellion of 1916 And Its Martyrs–Erin’s Tragic Easter, a collection of essays by eight writers. While it’s great these titles are available online, nothing beats the feel and smell of on old book pulled from the library shelf.

When Doris interviewed Sinéad

Sinéad de Valera

Doris Stevens

American suffragette, feminist, and author Doris Stevens wrote a profile of Sinéad de Valera in summer 1921 that was sympathetic to Irish independence and published in U.S., Irish, British, and French newspapers.  Stevens’ encounters with other Irish political and military figures provided additional glimpses of the country during the interregnum between the Truce of July 1921 and the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December of that year.

Before traveling to Dublin, Stevens attended a London performance of “The Whiteheaded Boy,” by Cork-born dramatist Lennox Robinson. She jotted in her journal:

“Made me realize all over again what a marvelous and also terrible race the Irish are. Also in the realism of this play it seemed to me that Ireland was a nation that had lived on its nerves for centuries. Each human being was like a powder magazine ready to break out at the least spark. This could only happen to a race whose normal and original sensitiveness had been transformed into a super sensitiveness, a disease of national magnitude, through centuries of doubt, misapprehension, and fear.

See my full piece on The Irish Story website.

‘Banshees of Inisherin’ & the Irish Civil War

The Banshees of Inisherin, a dark comedy about the estrangement of two friends living on a sparsely-populated Irish island, has received three Golden Globe awards and now appears favored to win a few Oscars. Colin Farrell won in the best comedy actor category, and the Martin McDonagh-directed film was honored as best comedy/musical and best screenplay. (Update: The movie was blanked at the Academy Awards.)

The fictional story, set in 1923, contains several references to the real life Civil War on the nearby mainland. The war started soon after Ireland won a measure of independence through a treaty with the United Kingdom. Ireland became a “free state” similar to Canada, not the full “republic” fought for in the Irish war of independence, 1919-1921. Separate legislation created the political partition of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which remained part of the U.K. The treaty split Irish brothers-in-arms into the civil war, which lasted from June 1922 to May 1923.

As Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson wrote, the feud between the two movie friends Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and Pádraic (Farrell) “works on its own terms, but it’s also a startlingly violent fight between men who are basically brothers, a fight that has a logic to it and yet is heartbreaking precisely because of the depth of history between them. It’s the conflict in microcosm.”

I would add two points:

1) The screenplay does not suggest that one of the friends is a republican “irregular” opposed to the treaty and the other a Free Stater who supported the deal. Their feud is personal, not political.

2) Pádraic says he doesn’t know what the fighting is about on the mainland. Though presented as a “dull” and uneducated character, this could be the film’s biggest fiction. When explosions and gun fire can be heard across the water, the island’s inhabitants surely understood what the fighting was about. We see regular boat service bring mail, supplies, and a priest to celebrate mass and hear confessions. The islanders are not that isolated.

  • Quick aside: the real life film locations are Achill Island, County Mayo, and Inishmore, one of the three Aran Islands, County Galway.

At one point in the movie Pádraic looks at the calendar and realizes it is April 1. He wonders if Colm’s coldness is a cruel April Fools’ Day joke. It is not. Using the date as a marker, I found this description of the civil war in that day’s 1923 issue of The Boston Globe:

Tragedy is still monarch in Ireland, more firmly enthroned today than ever before in the country’s distressful history. The daily chronicle is a repetitive catalogue of outrage and destruction, of executions and killings, differing only from the world horrifying reign of the English ‘Black and Tans’ in the fact that the perpetrators are now exclusively Irish, and that Ireland’s present day Calvary is inflicted not by foreign invaders but by her own sons and daughters. It is a heart-breaking, tear-compelling experience for an American, particularly one of Irish ancestry … The staccato of machine guns, the ping of rifles, the phut of revolvers, detonations of land mines and bombs, the glare of incendiary fires, with their toll of life and property have become as routine as the succession of day by night. Twenty-four hours without a series of destructive incidents or outrages would be regarded almost as epochal.[1]”Former Boston Journalist Wonders If Gov Al Smith Couldn’t Help Ireland Find Happy Bridge To Peace”, The Boston Globe, April 1, 1923.

Colin Farrell, left, and Brendan Gleeson.                                                                                            Searchlight Pictures  

References

References
1 ”Former Boston Journalist Wonders If Gov Al Smith Couldn’t Help Ireland Find Happy Bridge To Peace”, The Boston Globe, April 1, 1923.

A ‘quiet day’ in Ireland’s civil war, 1923

Irish Free State representatives and anti-Free State republicans early in January 1923 confronted each other over control of $2.5 million of bond funds raised in the United States. As the showdown unfolded at the the Irish consulate in New York City, some U.S. newspapers suggested the Irish civil war had to come to America. The “Battle of Nassau Street”[1]”Irish Picketing Hylan, Riot Call  From Consulate”, Daily News (New York City), Jan. 3, 1923. ended without violence after three days, but wrangling over the bonds continued until the 1930s.

In Ireland, the real civil war raged into its seventh month. U.S. papers detailed political efforts to resolve the internecine conflict and brief stories about episodes of violence. Denis O’Connell, an Irish-born correspondent for the Heart-owned Universal Service news wire, filed a Jan. 27, 1923, dispatch that attempted to give American readers a more comprehensive view of the suffering in Ireland, even on “quiet” days when there wasn’t “big news.” He described the shooting deaths and injuries to dozens of people, plus bombings, postal holdups, and railroad vandalism, with just a sentence or two devoted to each episode. O’Connell gave particular attention to the women “irregulars” fighting against the Free State government:

The soldiers do not search women in Dublin. Women frequently have thrown bombs in Dublin and used revolvers with deadly effect. Women have been caught in the mountains and wayside dugouts, shouldering rifles and sharing with the men all the hardships and exposure.

Partial clipping from the Jan. 28, 1923, issue of the Buffalo (N.Y.) Courier shows the top portion of the story’s two columns. This is not the full story.

O’Connell, a native of Cork city, was educated at the local Christian Brothers schools and began his career at the Cork Free Press. His coverage of the 1913 Dublin lockout caught the attention of the Heart-owned International News Service, which hired him as a London-based correspondent.[2]”Mr. Denis O’Connell” obituary, The Irish Press, May 18, 1949. The forename of his byline frequently appeared as “Daniel,” the same as Ireland’s 19th century “Liberator.” It’s unclear whether this was a pseudonym or garbled in the cable transmission. The byline appears both ways in multiple U.S. papers throughout the Irish revolutionary period.

O’Connell interviewed Éamon de Valera at his home in Dublin shortly after the Jan. 7, 1922, Anglo-Irish Treaty vote: ” ‘I am giving you the first authorized statement I have given to any press man since the beginning of the negotiations,’ said the Sinn Fein chieftain as he paced the floor. De Valera spoke carefully, slowly weighing every word before he uttered it.”[3]”New Regime Begins Rule For Ireland”, Oakland Tribune, Jan. 16, 1922; and “Mr. De Valera Interviewed”, Irish Examiner, Jan. 17, 1922.

Universal Service, which belonged to the Hearst empire in 1923, merged with International News in 1937. Other Irish and English journalists, based in Ireland and in England, worked for U.S. newspapers and wire services during the revolutionary period. O’Connell later became a correspondent for the Daily Express in Cork. He died in London in 1949.

References

References
1 ”Irish Picketing Hylan, Riot Call  From Consulate”, Daily News (New York City), Jan. 3, 1923.
2 ”Mr. Denis O’Connell” obituary, The Irish Press, May 18, 1949.
3 ”New Regime Begins Rule For Ireland”, Oakland Tribune, Jan. 16, 1922; and “Mr. De Valera Interviewed”, Irish Examiner, Jan. 17, 1922.

Best of the Blog, 2022

Welcome to my tenth annual Best of the Blog, a roundup of the year’s work. July marked our milestone tenth anniversary, with more than 900 total posts since 2012. I appreciate the support of regular readers, especially email subscribers. (Join at right.) Thanks also to the archivists and librarians who assisted my research during the year, whether in person or remote. I visited collections at Princeton University, Harvard University, Boston College, and Boston Public Library for the first time, and returned to archives at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., and the Dioceses of Pittsburgh. … Special thanks to Professor Guy Beiner, director of the Irish Studies Program at BC, for his warm welcome this fall.

I added two dozen posts to my American Reporting of Irish Independence series, which totals more than 140 entries since December 2018, including several from guest contributors. This year I began circling back to earlier years of the Irish revolution. Highlights included:

FREELANCE STORIES & PRESENTATIONS:

I was pleased to publish stories with several new platforms (*) this year and delighted to give a virtual presentation to the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh:

‘Luminous In Its Presentation’:
The Pittsburgh Catholic and Revolutionary Ireland, 1912-1923
*Gathered Fragments: Annual journal of the Catholic Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania (Publishes late December 2022/early January 2023)

The Long Road to ‘Redress’ in Ireland
History News Network, (George Washington University), Oct. 30, 2022

My Pilgrimages to St. Patrick’s Churches
*Arlington Catholic Herald & syndicated by *Catholic News Service, March 11, 2022

The Irish Revolution in Pittsburgh
*Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Feb. 17, 2022, presentation linked from headline

Watch the presentation from the linked ‘Irish Revolution in Pittsburgh’ headline above, or from here.

At 50th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” Peace Feels Less Certain
History News Network, (George Washington University), Jan. 30, 2022

Cheers and Jeers for Ireland: Éamon De Valera’s Alabama Experience
*Alabama Heritage Magazine, Winter 2022

GUEST POSTS:

Thanks to this year’s four guest contributors, detailed below. Journalists, historians, authors, researchers, and travelers to Ireland are welcome to offer submissions. Use the contact form on the Guest Posts landing page to make a suggestion.

Journalists recall coverage challenges during Northern Ireland TroublesDaniel Carey is a PhD student at Dublin City University. His thesis examines the working lives of former journalists and editors in Ireland.

Pro-Treaty delegation in Pittsburgh, May 1922Dr. Anne Good Forrestal, a former lecturer in Sociology at Trinity College Dublin, is the granddaughter of Seán and Delia MacCaoilte. In spring 1922, he was part of the pro-Treaty delegation that visited America, including a stop in Pittsburgh. This story is based on one of his letters from the city.

Detailing the Crosbies of North KerryMichael Christopher Keane is a retired University College Cork lecturer and author of three books about the Crosbies, leading and often controversial landlord families in County Kerry for over 300 years.

Periodicals & Journalism in Twentieth-Century IrelandFelix M. Larkin and Mark O’Brien have edited two volumes of essays that focus on periodicals as a vehicle for news and commentary, rather than literary miscellany.

BEST OF THE REST: 

These stories were the most popular outside the “American reporting” and “Guest posts” series:

YEARS PAST:

Highlights of earlier work found here:

YEAR AHEAD:

I plan to spend the first half of 2023 in Cambridge, Mass., as my wife completes her Nieman fellowship at Harvard. I will continue to participate in BC’s Irish Studies Program. I also hope to finish my book on how American reporters covered the Irish revolutionary period as the “decade of centenaries” concludes in May with the 100th anniversary of the end of the Irish Civil War. God willing, I hope to travel to Ireland for the first time since shortly before the pandemic.

Best wishes to all,
Mark

When British troops left Southern Ireland

On Dec. 17, 1922, the last British troops departed what had become the 26-county Irish Free State, today’s Republic of Ireland, in ceremonies at Dublin. British military and police remained in the partitioned, six-county Northern Ireland. Here is a sample of U.S. newspaper reporting:

“British military rule in Ireland came to an end yesterday, after 600 years. The final spectacle in the historical drama was enacted on the quays of the Liffey as, one after another, four transports disappeared into the mists, bound for England. The last British troops that had occupied Southern Ireland sailed in those transports, sped by a tremendous demonstration of Irish affection, bitterness fostered for generations forgotten. In their ears, as the troopships swung out into the tide-way was the blare of a Free State army and playing Auld Lange Syne; the cheers and God-speed-ye’s of a great throng on the quays; the riverbank of a mass of fluttering handkerchiefs and Irish colleens throwing kisses.” — George McDonough, United Press

This image was widely used in U.S. newspapers through late December 1922. I have not seen a photo credit.

“Before they left, the British troops hauled in the Union Jack and the incoming Free State troops immediately hoisted the Irish tricolor, which now floats from all the barracks and government buildings in Dublin. … The (British) troops everywhere were loudly cheered. … The ‘Tommies’ were astonished at the display of good will. … A siren farewell by all the ships in the harbor sped the departing British troops on their way as transports moved out to sea. … The whistle chorus began the minute the first transport turned its nose homeward, and continued until the last British had got underway.” — Associated Press

“By nightfall not a single English soldier remained in Southern Ireland. Never has the city watched such a spectacle, and the people of Dublin gave free rein to their emotions as the columns swung by, each regiment preceded by its band and colors.” — New York Times

“The London office of the United News Sunday received from its Dublin correspondent a story concerning the departure of the last of British troops from Ireland. The telegram was dated “Bail Eatha, Oliath,” (sic) which indicates the movement to resuscitate Gaelic has started in southern Ireland. — United News, via Chicago Tribune (The correct spelling of Dublin in Gaelic is Baile Átha Cliath. The 1922 version was probably mangled in the telegraph transmission.)

‘Irish Bulletin’ subscription replies, December 1921

The “Irish Papers” collection at Boston Public Library contains letters, documents, pamphlets, and other material related to the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, 1919-1923. I recently reviewed portions of the collection related to press activity in Ireland during the period as part of my American Reporting of Irish Independence series and book project. MH

The Irish Bulletin debuted in November 1919 as the official organ of the provisional Irish Republic. Its original press run of less than 50 copies grew to about 1,200 over two years.[1]See Bureau of Military History Witness Statement of Kathleen Napoli-McKenna, who worked at the Bulletin, p. 5. Readers included political insiders on both sides of the Irish Sea, the continent, and across the Atlantic, including American and other foreign journalists.

Chicago Tribune, Dec. 7, 1921. Bulletin referenced below George photo.

The Bulletin operated underground for most of its exitance. It effectively countered British propaganda and helped make the Irish republican case before the world. British operatives raided the Bulletin’s Dublin offices in March 1921 and soon published a forged edition, which fooled few readers. After the July 1921 truce, the Bulletin emerged from the shadows as Irish and British representatives began to negotiate a treaty settlement.

On Nov. 25, 1921, the Bulletin “manager” mailed a circular to known recipients from Mansion House, Dublin, likely working from the publication’s daily and weekly lists of names and addresses as of late July 1921.[2]Held by Bureau of the Military History, Dublin. Reference Code BMH-CD-006-09-16(k) and Reference Code BMH-CD-006-09-16(l), respectively. The circular stated:

The circumstances of the situation in Ireland have hitherto prevented direct communications between the readers of the IRISH BULLETIN and those responsible for its publication. This difficulty does not at present exist, and if recipients wish to communicate with the publishers they can do so (via Mansion House). We shall be glad to hear from those who receive the BULLETIN as to change of address, non-receipt, etc. … If no such acknowledgement reaches (the manager) he will discontinue sending the BULLETIN to that address.

A follow up circular mailed Dec. 12, 1921, said, “We have had no acknowledgement from you … (and) would be glad if you will let us know whether the copies of the BULLETIN sent you have arrived.”

The “Irish Papers” collection contains 216 replies, most of them on the bottom of either the first or second circular. John Steele, the Chicago Tribune‘s London correspondent, replied to the first notice with “many thanks for the Bulletin which is being received regularly.” He often referenced the Bulletin in his dispatches to America, but the Dec. 7, 1921, story clipped here appears to be the last time. Steele and American journalist Carl Ackerman, also on the Bulletin’s daily recipients list, in 1920 and 1921 shuttled between Irish and British officials to assist negotiations leading to the treaty, as detailed our previous post.

Other Americans on the Bulletin’s daily mailing list included:

  • The American Consul’s office, Dublin
  • Clemens J. France, leader of the American Committee for Relief in Ireland, Dublin
  • Associated Press of America, London
  • P.J. Kelly, Irish-born correspondent of the New York World, Dublin
  • John H. McHugh Stuart, New York Herald, London
  • Webb Miller, United Press, London
  • E.C. Reeves, International News Service, London
  • Frank P. Walsh, a member of the American Commission on Irish Independence that visited Ireland in May 1919, and other activities, New York

American recipients on the Bulletin’s weekly mailing list included the Irish Diplomatic Mission, Washington, D.C.; Notre Dame University library, Indiana; and nearly 50 chapters of the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic (AARIR), which splintered from the Friends of Irish Freedom in late 1920 to support Éamon de Valera. Almost 100 newspapers and magazines are on the list, most of them Catholic weeklies. The list included secular Irish papers such as The Irish News and Chicago Citizen; The Irish Press, Philadelphia, The Irish Standard, Minneapolis; The Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, New York City; the Kentucky Irish American, Louisville; and a few labor organs. Mainstream press included The Nation magazine, which backed the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland in late 1920 and early 1921; and The New York Times, hardly a supporter of Irish independence at any time.

The Pennsylvania state chapter of the AARIR, based in Philadelphia, and the Catholic Sentinel of Portland, Oregon, nearly 7,500 miles from Dublin, are among the American groups that replied to the circular, as contained in the Boston archive.

G. K. Chesterton

English author G. K. Chesterton, who wrote a book and newspaper columns in favor of Irish independence, also sent a hand-written note to the Bulletin, apparently after reading the second notice:

“I hope you will forgive both delay & haste, as I am in a domestic rush. I certainly supposed I had read all of the issues of the Bulletin sent to me, with great interest and admiration for the ability and sincerity with which your case is argued; but it is clear that I missed the one you mention, or I should have sent the acknowledgement before. Yours very truly,”

The Bulletin ceased publication on Dec. 11, 1921, after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London, as referenced in Steele’s story above. The timing of the paper’s closure suggests some miscommunication among the editorial staff and other treaty supporters, or possibly disappointment with the subscriber notification response.

“With the coming of the Truce “The Irish Bulletin” on which I had the honour to work, had successfully completed its mission,” Kathleen Napoli-McKenna says in her Bureau of Military History Witness Statement, linked in Note 1. (She seems to mean the treaty.) “I recall the days of my work on the Bulletin with a deep sense of nostalgic happiness.”

Subsequent iterations of the Bulletin were published by anti-treaty forces through spring 1923.

See earlier posts on the 100th anniversary of the Anglo-Irish Treaty:

Dec. 6, 1921: When U.S. newspapers headlined Irish peace

Irish-American press reactions to Anglo-Irish Treaty

‘The Republic of Ireland is dead; long live … ‘

(This post was updated Dec. 13, 2022.)

References

References
1 See Bureau of Military History Witness Statement of Kathleen Napoli-McKenna, who worked at the Bulletin, p. 5.
2 Held by Bureau of the Military History, Dublin. Reference Code BMH-CD-006-09-16(k) and Reference Code BMH-CD-006-09-16(l), respectively.

Reporter vs. reporter: Ackerman & Grasty in Ireland, 1920

This post is part of my American Reporting of Irish Independence series. I am grateful to Maurice Walsh, author of ‘The News from Ireland: Foreign Correspondents and the Irish Revolution’, who provided material from the Ackerman papers at the Library of Congress. MH

A few of the American journalists who detailed the war between Irish separatists and the British government for U.S. newspapers also joined back-channel efforts to help resolve the conflict. Such an intrigue surfaced in June 1920, when Philadelphia Public Ledger correspondent Carl W. Ackerman reported that another American newsman had come to Ireland on behalf of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.

Ackerman’s June 1, 1920, story mentioned Grasty in the fourth paragraph.

“One of the most significant, undoubtedly, of all the recent developments in the Irish situation is the arrival in Dublin of Charles H. Grasty, a well-known journalist, a member of the staff of The New York Times, was frequently during the war an observer for the president,” Ackerman wrote. Grasty “is in confidential communication with the White House, and probability is that the president has followed his war custom of commissioning some journalist to make a special investigation for him, while ostensibly representing an American newspaper.”[1]“President Wilson Has Special Envoy In Ireland Now”, Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, June 1, 1920.

Ackerman was correct about Wilson using journalists as scouts. The president sent pioneering muckraker Ray Stannard Baker (McClue’s, American magazine) to Ireland during the spring 1918 conscription crisis. “The extreme Ulsterman, it seemed to me, was exactly matched by the extreme Sinn Feiner, both for themselves alone,” Baker wrote. “There seemed to be no spirit of give and take: no desire anywhere for what Mr. Wilson called accommodation.”[2]Ray Stannard Baker, American Chronicle; The Autobiography of Ray Stannard Baker. [David Grayson] (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1945), “A Rebellious Ireland And My Report of What I … Continue reading

Less than a year later, Wilson dispatched George Creel to Ireland. Creel (Kansas City World, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News) had just finished his duties as head of the U.S. government’s Committee for Public Information during the Great War. In a March 1,1919, memorandum to Wilson, he described the Irish in Ireland as more flexible than the Irish Americans. Creel said that Sinn Fein’s December 1918 election success had finished off the 40-year-old Irish home rule movement. He believed dominion status would be accepted immediately, otherwise sentiment in Ireland and America would harden in favor of an Irish republic. Creel also warned of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s duplicity and stressed settlement in order to placate Irish Americans.[3]George Creel, Rebel at Large, (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947), pp. 216-22, and The War, The World, and Wilson (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1920), p 202.

Ackerman reported that Grasty arrived in Europe on a diplomatic passport, which he obtained about a month earlier. “Mr. Grasty admitted at the time, when questioned by customs officials, that he was on a special appointment by President Wilson,” Ackerman wrote. The U.S. State Department on April 9 stamped “SPECIAL” on Grasty’s passport, eight days before he boarded the Baltic to cross the Atlantic. The haste of Grasty’s application and departure is suggested by his sudden withdrawal from an April 14-16 business convention in Des Moines, Iowa, where he was scheduled to deliver a speech titled, “The New Balance of Power.”[4]“Iowa Business Congress Draws Big Business Men” by Associated Press, Webster City (Iowa) Freeman, April 12, 1920, and “Business Congress To Open Tomorrow”, Des Moines Register, April 13, 1920.

Second-day iterations of Ackerman’s story contained a State Department denial of the special passport or any official connection to American diplomatic activities. The U.S. government “acknowledged that (Grasty) might have gone to Dublin under a ‘special’ form of passport such as is issued often by American embassies or legations to messengers charged with the duty of conveying diplomatic papers to consular agents.” Meanwhile, “the British government understands that (Grasty’s) mission to Ireland is purely one of observation on behalf of President Wilson.”[5]”England’s Irish Policy Outlined as Parlays Fail”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2, 1920, and “Britain Decides To Increase Military Forces In Ireland”, St. Louis Star … Continue reading

The Baltic‘s passenger records show Grasty, 57, arrived at Liverpool on April 27.[6]The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists.; Class: BT26; Piece: 669. Nothing on the manifest indicates diplomatic status. The word “Editor” is written in the space for occupation. On May 1, Grasty filed a dispatch from Paris about the just-concluded San Remo conference in Italy.[7]”Germans Must Act on Terms of Pact at Spa Conference”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 2, 1920. His subsequent reports about Europe’s efforts to recover from the Great War included a long opinion piece from London dated June 1, the day he was named in Ackerman’s story. Under the headline, “Why Europe Must Be Cured To Keep America Safe.” Grasty’s view was: “The United States is in greater danger today than at the time of the German offensive in March 1918. … The feeling in Europe against America has grown, as the feeling in America against Europe has grown.”[8]“Why Europe Must Be Cured To Keep America Safe” , The New York Times, June 13, 1920.

Second passport, Wilson connection

On June 9, Grasty dropped by the U.S. Embassy in London to complete an “Emergency Passport Application.” He stated his occupation as “journalist” and “journalistic work” as the reason for his travel.[9]National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Volume #: Volume 168: Great Britain. Grasty was no stranger to the U.S. State Department. He had applied for and obtained several passports for Atlantic voyages in the previous decade. In 1920, the United States was beginning to standardize passports in the aftermath of the World War.[10]Giulia Pines, “The Contentious History of the Passport” in National Geographic. Published online May 16, 2017.

Charles H. Grasty, undated.

Grasty was a known Wilson supporter and confidante. The reporter detailed their relationship in a January 1920 piece for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, “The Personality Behind the President.” In 1912, as owner of the Baltimore Sun, Grasty used the newspaper to back Wilson as the Democratic presidential nominee at the party’s national convention in that city. The newsman supported the candidate through his successful campaign against Republican incumbent President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt of the progressive Bull Moose party.

From 1912 to 1922, Wilson and Grasty exchanged at least four dozen letters, though none of the correspondence in two archives dates from 1920.[11]Index to the Woodrow Wilson Papers, Vol. 2, G-O, Presidents’ papers index series / Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, and Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum, Library & … Continue reading The president and the reporter “were in intimate contact” during the 1919 Paris peace conference and in Washington, D.C., the Times reported at Grasty’s death in January 1924.[12]”Charles H. Grasty Dies In London” , The New York Times, Jan. 20, 1924. Grasty “enjoyed the former president’s highest respect and confidence and was a warm personal friend of both Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.” The obituary also said that Grasty held the trust and confidence of Lloyd George, who relied on the relationship to send key messages to America during the war years and afterward. And the Times noted Grasty’s frequent interviews with London newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe.

Grasty confronts Ackerman 

On June 12, Grasty confronted Ackerman at the latter’s office at Charing Cross, London. The men “argued” for about 90 minutes over the June 1 story, according to Ackerman’s three-page letter to his editor, John J. Spurgeon.[13]Ackerman to Spurgeon, June 12, 1920, Carl W. Ackerman papers, Library of Congress, Box 131, Miscellaneous correspondence, London, England. Grasty showed Ackerman a copy of his own letter to Spurgeon “denying that he was in Ireland on official business.”

It seems undisputed that Wilson, his physician and confidante Dr. Gary T. Grayson, and U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby asked Grasty to undertake a special mission to Europe, including Ireland. Problems appear to have developed when Grasty told New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs, who objected to the arrangement while he represented the newspaper.

“Grasty states that he told Mr. Ochs that he would not accept the President’s offer and that he wrote a letter to Mr. Colby refusing to undertake the work,” Ackerman wrote. “Grasty admits, however, that he did accept a special diplomatic passport from Mr. Colby … (but) could not afford to have the question of his special passport discussed in the press. … (He) admits that The Times accuses him of double-dealing and that Mr. Ochs is ‘sore.'”

Ackerman wrote that Grasty “did not telegraph anything to the New York Times while he was in Ireland, although he did begin to send messages as soon as he reached London.” It is unclear how Ackerman knew of Grasty’s telegraph activities, though he likely learned such information from British intelligence, as we’ll see a little later.

Irish series

Before he updated his passport and confronted Ackerman in London, Grasty on May 26 “tea’d & supped” with Sir Horace Plunkett in Dublin, according to a diary entry by the Irish agricultural reformer and home rule supporter.[14]1920 Diary of Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett (1854–1932), Transcribed, annotated and indexed by Kate Targett. December 2012, National Library of Ireland. This  was not surprising, as the two men had known each other for years. “Wherever he goes he makes friends through his gentle optimism and sturdy character,” Grasty wrote in his 1918 book, Flashes from the Front. “For British patriot that he is, he is an Irishman to his heart’s core. His life has been a labor of love for Ireland.”[15]Charles H. Grasty, Flashes from the Front, (New York, The Century Co., 1918.), pp. 136-139.

It’s likely that Grasty made multiple trips to Ireland between May and August. The four-part series he wrote for the Times, published in mid-August, shows datelines from earlier in the month. The headlines below are linked to a pdf of each story, followed by the dateline and publication date, and a select excerpt:

“I am just back from Ireland, whither I went to gather impressions of the present conditions there. My mental attitude was impartial and I shall try to report facts and opinions as I encountered them in my visit. If in transcribing my notes, made as I went along, the Sinn Fein viewpoint stands out less than the opposite one, it is because ‘of low visibility’ on that side of the fence.

“After talking with as many people on both sides as I was able to see, and getting the opinion of the few neutrals whom it was possible to find in Ireland, I came to the conclusion that the minimum that Sinn Fein would accept was full dominion rule like Canada, omitting the Governor General and including control of excise, customs and police. They will not consent to leaving Ulster out. That is the situation at this time. Of course, if some adversary should overtake the movement for independent Ireland, and especially if there should be a split with the labor union, the demand might be modified; of if, on the other hand, British helplessness continued and the Presidential campaign in America crystalized American sympathy, Sinn Fein might decide to go the whole hog.”

“I don’t believe that Ulster is as eager for British rule as you might think after reading one of Sir Edward Carson’s speeches. Ulster people do not want to have Dublin rule put upon them just at this stage, but they are looking ahead to a future when Ireland may become a great industrial kingdom, dominated commercially and financially by Belfast, the well-organized capital of Ulster. Indeed, it was often in my mind as I traveled through Ireland what great possibilities awaited Ireland when permanent order should come.”

“Judging by results, British rule in Ireland has been a failure. Britain cannot plead the peculiarities and shortcomings of the Irish race as an excuse for her failure. She has been mistress of the situation for centuries and has had the power to enforce her authority and to apply the necessary remedies. The simple fact is that she has refused to bring to her task the kind of study and effort which the Irish situation called for. … But Ireland will be a unit sooner or later. The silent and irresistible forces of commercial and industrial self-interest will bring the North and South together.”

It is unclear whether Grasty sent any private communication to the Wilson administration about his interactions in Ireland. Now, his views about the Irish situation were available for anyone to see.

Irish-American reaction

The Friends of Irish Freedom, through its weekly News Letter, immediately dismissed Grasty as part of “the small group of self-described, ‘impartial, disinterested, and fair’ newspaper ‘experts’ who spend three or four weeks in Ireland, and then advise American readers how to view English misrule of Ireland.” The News Letter said he made a “despicable attempt” to exploit sectarian division in Ireland, though religion hardly dominates the series. Ever watchful of real or perceived slights against the Irish cause by mainstream American or British newspapers, the News Letter also said the New York Times “has gone far in championing England’s course in Ireland.”[16]News Letter of the Friends of Irish Freedom, Vol. II, No. 8, Aug. 21, 1920, p. 5.

In its following issue, the News Letter criticized Grasty as “confident” of British press magnate Lord Northcliffe, a nemesis of Irish republicans on both sides of the Atlantic. This was certainly true. Shortly after the end of the Great War, Grasty had reported from London on how Northcliffe “is making a wonderful hit with the American newspaper men. … always accessible to them … indefatigable in his efforts to help them … [with] a very large accumulated influence among Americans generally, but particularly among American working newspaper men.”[17]“Lord Northcliffe Our Interpreter”, The New York Times, Jan. 12, 1919. Story datelined Dec. 21, 1918.

The pro-Irish press, including ‘The Tablet’, Aug. 28, 1920, delighted in the State Department denial of Ackerman’s story.

The New Letter also questioned whether Grasty could write a “disinterested” journalistic assessment of the Irish situation while simultaneously acting “confidentially” for President Wilson and the U.S. State Department, as Ackerman reported in June. News Letter chief Daniel T. O’Connell wrote to the U.S. State Department to complain the articles contained “statements grossly unfair and calculated to advance British interests in relation to England’s treatment of Ireland. … [I]f Grasty is empowered to act for our Government in any capacity whatsoever, it is obvious he should not be permitted to utilize such relationships as a means for spreading misstatements and otherwise giving circulation to error.”[18]Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Great Britain, 1910-1929, Ireland – (Irish Free State, Eire) Political Affairs, General 841d.00, Roll 219, Aug. 14, 1920, … Continue reading

The State Department replied to O’Connell that Grasty “is not engaged in any Diplomatic mission, or assignment, under the authority of this Government.” The Times reporter was not “an official or unofficial representative”  and “not traveling with a Diplomatic passport.”[19]State Department Records, Roll 219, Aug. 18, 1920, from G. Howland Shaw to O’Connell, and News Letter of the Friends of Irish Freedom, Vol. II, No. 9, Aug. 28, 1920, p. 3, Tablet, Aug. 28, and … Continue reading It was the government’s second denial since Ackerman’s story was published in June.

Some of the pro-Irish press in America cast the denial as a swipe at both journalists. The Times never addressed the matter on its pages.

Ackerman’s work

Ackerman, 30, had arrived in London in March 1920 as correspondent for the Public Ledger’s new foreign service. He made several trips to Ireland over the following months and filed stories before and after Grasty’s August series in the Times. As Walsh details in The News from Ireland, Ackerman’s reporting was influenced by two insiders–one American, one British–and he actively participated in back-channel efforts to bring peace to Ireland. In this regard, his outing of Grasty as working for the Wilson administration smacks of hypocrisy.

Top of March 7, 1920, Brooklyn Daily Eagle advertisement for the new foreign news service.

The Public Ledger retained Col. Edward House, Wilson’s former confidant and fixer, as an advisor on diplomacy for its foreign bureau. Ackerman and House had regularly swapped insights and advice with each other during the Great War, and House had a similar relationship with Grasty and other journalists. Walsh writes this “was not unconnected to [Ackerman’s] view of how he should collect news as a journalist; the idea that good journalism was the fruit of being on excellent terms with powerful contacts,” which Ackerman described as ” ‘key men’ in ‘key positions.’ “[20]Walsh, News from Ireland, (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.) p. 141. In fact, Ackerman also paid a June 30 visit to Plunkett with a note from House “about the Irish situation & the possibility of his arbitrating betw’n the British & Irish Governments.”[21]1920 Diary of Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett (1854–1932), National Library of Ireland.

Ackerman’s second inside source was Sir Basil Thomson, director of intelligence at Scotland Yard. Beginning in May 1920, Thomson selectively leaked documents gathered by British intelligence to “prepare the ground for negotiation with IRA leaders” and “briefed Ackerman to carry messages to Sinn Fein and IRA leaders in Ireland, using Ackerman’s journalistic mission as cover for advancing an Irish settlement by negotiation.”[22]Ibid., p. 143. Through the summer officials contemplated using Col. House as a mediator in the negotiations. While the effort eventually fizzled, Walsh notes that, “Ackerman’s role as go-between” continued to evolve.[23]Ibid., p. 145. Walsh also writes:

“There is no sign that Ackerman’s employers were aware of the secret work he had undertaken. In August 1920 Ackerman’s editor, John J. Spurgeon, wrote to him expressing relief that Col. House had abandoned the idea of becoming a mediator in Ireland. The editor felt that for House, ‘in his present capacity as a member of the editorial staff of an American newspaper, such a role would be absolutely out of the question.’ If it was out of bounds to become a mediator on grounds of preserving editorial independence–even though he was an advisor to the Public Ledger and not a journalist–it must have been an equally forbidden path for Ackerman.”[24]Ibid., p. 146, citing letter from Spurgeon to Ackerman, Aug. 6, 1920.

‘Irish Realities’

Grasty updated his reporting from Ireland in a September piece for Atlantic Monthly  headlined “Irish Realities.” Among his conclusions related to America:

“I begin by saying that the common belief in America that the present movement in Ireland is a spontaneous eruption of a people smarting under tyrannous oppression is not well-founded. The movement, unlike similar movements in the past, has been carefully planned by a few bold and astute leaders. … For without financial help from America and an American sympathy that will constantly embarrass Britain, the enterprise of an Irish republic is a mere chimera.”

“The movement went forward without a single setback until the month of June of this year. First, the Republican Convention in Chicago, and then the Democratic Convention in San Francisco, refused to indorse Irish independence. De Valera failed in his task. With American sympathy and help, the achievement of a republic in Ireland was a possibility. Without them, the extreme of the Irish demand can never be attained. … The failure to get the Irish question into the American presidential election, in my opinion, reduces to nil the chance, always slender, in view of Britain’s necessities, of establishing an Irish republic as the result of this particular movement. Without strong American aid, the conflicting elements in Sinn Fein cannot long be held together in the effort along the present lines for full independence.”

The Atlantic piece received wide attention from U.S. newspaper editorial pages, including the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Palm Beach Post, and Kansas City Times. Even the Brooklyn Daily Eagle commented on Grasty’s “recently returned … investigation of Irish conditions in England and Ireland.”[25]”People In Ireland Bound To Win In End, Observer’s Belief”, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 12, 1920. It did not mention the Ackerman story about Grasty published four months earlier.

Collins interview

Ackerman’s “exclusive and authorized interview” with Irish leader Michael Collins also drew significant press attention about the same time. An editor’s note said, “For more than two years the British Government has searched for him. Today every policeman and officer in Ireland carries his photograph and description and has orders to arrest him at sight on the general charge of directing assassinations and raids on government offices.”[26]”Irish Never Will Accept Premier’s Terms–Collins”, Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, Aug. 26, 1920.

Walsh has detailed how Irish propaganda minister Desmond FitzGerald proposed the Collins interview to Ackerman shortly after the plan to use Col. House as a mediator fell from favor. Ackerman delayed his Irish Sea crossing a few days until he could first discuss the matter with Thompson, the Scotland Yard intelligence director. The reporter then debriefed the spy master on his return to London, even writing a private memorandum for British government officials about whether the Irish were hardened on a republic or willing to negotiate a settlement.[27]Walsh, News from Ireland, p. 145.

Such behind the scenes intrigues were unknown at the time, but would be revealed after the Irish and British reached a December 1921 treaty agreement. The Lowell (Mass.) Courier-Citizen lauded Ackerman’s scoop in an editorial widely republished on the opinion pages of other U.S. papers.[28]Publication date of original editorial unavailable. Reproductions include “Ackerman Among The Sinn Feiners”, St. Louis Star and Times, Oct. 21, 1920; “Newspapermen Best … Continue reading It said:

The American newspaperman is the best detective there is. … (British officials) can’t get near (Collins). Yet over to Dublin goes Carl Ackerman … and secures a two-hour interview with this very genuine celebrity. … Ackerman, of course, started (with) some advantages which the agents of Scotland Yard don’t have. He was personally known to some of ‘Mick’s’ friends as a chap who could be trusted. That’s always a newspaperman’s greatest asset when he’s on a difficult and dangerous job.

State Department files

U.S. Consulate in Ireland records for 1920 contain at least two other references to Grasty and Ackerman.

Not long after Grasty published his Ireland series in the Times, he asked to see the official cables of U.S Consul Frederick T. F. Dumont, then stationed in Dublin, “in order to keep him fully informed from authoritative sources as to present events in Ireland.” Grasty essentially made a public records request nearly 50 years before the federal law providing access to such U.S. government documents. A State Department official commented: “This strikes me as rather an unusual request. It might eventually prove to be an embarrassing precedent to establish to allow newspaper men access to our official files.”

Nevertheless, Grasty’s request was relayed to Washington, which responded two days later with a two-word reply: “Certainly not.”[29]Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Great Britain, 1910-1929, Ireland – (Irish Free State, Eire) Political Affairs, General 841d.00, Roll 217: to Hurley from … Continue reading

Dumont, a frequent critic of press coverage of the Irish war, that November complimented Grasty and Ackerman in one of his regular dispatches to Washington:

The Irish press devotes a column at a time to men like Grasty of the New York Times or Ackerman of the Philadelphia (Public) Ledger when they tell the truth concerning the Irish situation, calling them and their papers paid agents of the British Government. Each paper has repeatedly been denounced as a paper owned by the Government. Events in various parts of the world have accustomed the public to sensations and they must be served up by the press of all countries to their readers if circulation and the money which comes from this circulation is to be retained.[30]Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Great Britain, 1910-1929, Ireland – (Irish Free State, Eire) Political Affairs, general 841d.00, Role 217, Dumont to State … Continue reading

Dumont wrote his comments nine days before Bloody Sunday in Dublin and a month before the burning of Cork city. Irish war “sensations” continued another six months into 1921, before the truce agreement and treaty negotiations. Ackerman and Grasty continued to report on Ireland, the former still involved in back-channel maneuverings. John Steele of the Chicago Tribune also claimed a role in the Irish peace settlement.

The veteran correspondent Steele had accompanied Ackerman on his first trip to Ireland in spring 1920 and introduced him to several key contacts, including Dumont and FitzGerald, the Irish propaganda minister. Ackerman acknowledged Steele’s role in peace negotiations when he revealed his own efforts in an April 1922 magazine story:

At the same time Mr. Steele was ‘carrying on’ negotiations between Sir Hamar Greenwood and other Sinn Fein leaders which resulted in the final negotiation of the truce last summer (July 1921). Unknown to the outside world two American newspaper men were acting as the sole connecting links between Sinn Fein and Downing Street … “[31]Carl W. Ackerman, “Ireland From A Scotland Yard Notebook”, The Atlantic Monthly, April 1922.

Whatever intentions the Wilson administration once had for Grasty, his chance to play a part in the Irish peace settlement seems to have been scuttled by Ackerman’s June 1920 exposure of his trip to Ireland. We can never know what impact this might have had on the course of the Irish war.

References

References
1 “President Wilson Has Special Envoy In Ireland Now”, Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, June 1, 1920.
2 Ray Stannard Baker, American Chronicle; The Autobiography of Ray Stannard Baker. [David Grayson] (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1945), “A Rebellious Ireland And My Report of What I Saw”, p. 337.
3 George Creel, Rebel at Large, (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947), pp. 216-22, and The War, The World, and Wilson (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1920), p 202.
4 “Iowa Business Congress Draws Big Business Men” by Associated Press, Webster City (Iowa) Freeman, April 12, 1920, and “Business Congress To Open Tomorrow”, Des Moines Register, April 13, 1920.
5 ”England’s Irish Policy Outlined as Parlays Fail”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2, 1920, and “Britain Decides To Increase Military Forces In Ireland”, St. Louis Star and Times, June 2, 1920.
6 The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists.; Class: BT26; Piece: 669.
7 ”Germans Must Act on Terms of Pact at Spa Conference”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 2, 1920.
8 “Why Europe Must Be Cured To Keep America Safe” , The New York Times, June 13, 1920.
9 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Volume #: Volume 168: Great Britain.
10 Giulia Pines, “The Contentious History of the Passport” in National Geographic. Published online May 16, 2017.
11 Index to the Woodrow Wilson Papers, Vol. 2, G-O, Presidents’ papers index series / Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, and Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum, Library & Research Center Digital Archive.
12 ”Charles H. Grasty Dies In London” , The New York Times, Jan. 20, 1924.
13 Ackerman to Spurgeon, June 12, 1920, Carl W. Ackerman papers, Library of Congress, Box 131, Miscellaneous correspondence, London, England.
14 1920 Diary of Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett (1854–1932), Transcribed, annotated and indexed by Kate Targett. December 2012, National Library of Ireland.
15 Charles H. Grasty, Flashes from the Front, (New York, The Century Co., 1918.), pp. 136-139.
16 News Letter of the Friends of Irish Freedom, Vol. II, No. 8, Aug. 21, 1920, p. 5.
17 “Lord Northcliffe Our Interpreter”, The New York Times, Jan. 12, 1919. Story datelined Dec. 21, 1918.
18 Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Great Britain, 1910-1929, Ireland – (Irish Free State, Eire) Political Affairs, General 841d.00, Roll 219, Aug. 14, 1920, letter from O’Connell to Sec. Colby, and “Exposing One Carl Ackerman”, The Tablet (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Aug. 28, 1920, and “What Is Grasty Doing?”, The Gaelic American, (New York, N.Y.) Sept. 4, 1920.
19 State Department Records, Roll 219, Aug. 18, 1920, from G. Howland Shaw to O’Connell, and News Letter of the Friends of Irish Freedom, Vol. II, No. 9, Aug. 28, 1920, p. 3, Tablet, Aug. 28, and Gaelic American, Sept. 4, 1920.
20 Walsh, News from Ireland, (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.) p. 141.
21 1920 Diary of Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett (1854–1932), National Library of Ireland.
22 Ibid., p. 143.
23 Ibid., p. 145.
24 Ibid., p. 146, citing letter from Spurgeon to Ackerman, Aug. 6, 1920.
25 ”People In Ireland Bound To Win In End, Observer’s Belief”, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 12, 1920.
26 ”Irish Never Will Accept Premier’s Terms–Collins”, Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, Aug. 26, 1920.
27 Walsh, News from Ireland, p. 145.
28 Publication date of original editorial unavailable. Reproductions include “Ackerman Among The Sinn Feiners”, St. Louis Star and Times, Oct. 21, 1920; “Newspapermen Best Detective”, The Daily Public Ledger, Maysville, Kentucky, Nov. 9, 1920; and others.
29 Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Great Britain, 1910-1929, Ireland – (Irish Free State, Eire) Political Affairs, General 841d.00, Roll 217: to Hurley from Winslow, Oct. 5, 1920; to “Dear Mr. Secretary” from V. H.,  Oct. 6, 1920; and to Winslow from Hurley, Oct. 7, 1920.
30 Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Great Britain, 1910-1929, Ireland – (Irish Free State, Eire) Political Affairs, general 841d.00, Role 217, Dumont to State Department, Nov. 12, 1920.
31 Carl W. Ackerman, “Ireland From A Scotland Yard Notebook”, The Atlantic Monthly, April 1922.