Dorothy Thompson

Wilmington Morning News/September 16, 1920

LONDON, Sept. 15—When Thomas McCurtain, the predecessor of the present Lord Mayor of Cork, who went on hunger strike In Brixton goal, was killed, the Irish jury who held an inquiry into the case brought in a verdict of murder and named a list of members of the Royal Irish constabulary—the British police. One by one that dark roll has been shortened. One by one those whose names were written thereon have dropped from sight, suddenly, and without warning.

One constable against whom there was rumored to be a special vendetta was hurried out of Cork while the inquiry was still In progress. His friends believed they had established for him a complete alibi. Weeks passed and the city in the south returned to a normal state of semi-quiet. The constable, pooh-poohing the anxiety of his friends, decided to return. He had not crossed the platform in the railroad station in Cork when he was shot dead.

Away in the north, in the Ulster city of Lisburn, another of these “marked men” was met on his way to church one Sunday morning months after McCurtain’s death, and riddled with shots before he could even scream.

They Never Forget

There is something reminiscent of the “knitting women” of the French revolution in this Irish capacity to cherish a hate; to remember forever, and to extract the last farthing of payment for a wrong.

The ordinary soldier in the Sinn Fein cities of Limerick, Dublin or Cork is almost as safe as a civilian visitor. I cannot vouch for the truth of the statement, but I have been told that to shoot a British soldier except in defense, or under specific orders is an offense punishable by court-martial in the republican army. But those men, who because of particular activities are marked for death are most certainly doomed.

The case of the ‘G” men is in point. At the time of the rising in 1916 there were certain men in the British police service who knew the faces of every clerk in every office. It was they who identified Sinn Fein leaders and officers of the volunteers and furnished the information to the authorities which led to their arrests. One by one these men met their fate. “That was the war. If those men had lived not one of us would be alive today,” said a Sinn Fein leader.

The Countess Marciewicz

The speaker, by the way, was the Countess Marciewicz, the only woman member of the Irish republican administration, elected to the Sinn Fein parliament by St. Patrick’s division, Dublin. Three times arrested, once sentenced to death, and now wanted by the police, she is the bitterest—I was going to say “most bloodthirsty”—member of the Sinn Fein administration whom I met in Ireland.

She is a tall, gaunt, blond woman careless about her dress, nervous and hurried in her speech, with something of the same humorless intensity that distinguishes De Valera. In internal polities she is a socialist and very radical, standing in this particular almost alone among the members of the Sinn Fein ministry.

l met her in a little restaurant frequented by members of the Irish Transport Workers’ Union, the body which controls trade unionism in Ireland. Through the not too clean windows we could see the stand left by a machine gun, which had been covering the building and had only removed a few days before. We sat at unpainted kitchen tables and drank very strong tea.

The countess offered cigarettes, which were hailed with derision. “I make my nationalism an everyday affair,” she defended herself, “and always smoke Irish cigarettes.”

“The last word in martyrdom for the cause!” exclaimed a labor editor who was with us. “I smoke ’em in public, as an act of defiance, and everybody glares at me. In the haven of my own home I give a sigh of relief and unpatriotically reach for ‘gold flakes.’ “

The Countess looked at hers gloomily. “They don’t have much kick in them, do they,” she said.

Bitter Against England

On the subject of England she was very bitter. “The hope of the world is in the breakup of the British Empire,” she said, in a characteristic sharp staccato. “Personally I would associate myself with anything of anyone that was trying to accomplish that end. But all that talk about the German plot in Ireland was rot—worse luck!

“Some of us have reached the point where anything that England opposes commends itself to us for that reason,” she continued. “We don’t know much about Bolshevism, but when England takes the trouble to abuse Bolshevists we have a kindred feeling for them. Sinn Fein now is a coalition. It isn’t committed to any social or economic theory. We came into office by capturing the British elections, so we’ve got a parliamentary system which we inherited from England . . . but, although we all want a republic, we may not want to keep the parliamentary system . . . We had the idea of decentralisation and local self-government long before the Russians.

“All this talk of Bolshevism being allied with Sinn Fein is stupid . . . just an attempt to draw a red herring across the path of the truth. It’s as ignorant as was the remark of an English lady who said the other day that if you removed all the Russian Jews from Ireland the Irish question would be settled . . . . Now,” she said disgustedly, turning to the labor editor, “how many Russian Jews do you know in Ireland?”

He reflected, evidently desiring to be accurate. “I know four,” he said, finally.

Sinn Fein, Not “Red”

With the exception of Madame Marciewicz, who is, by the way, a member of an old, landed family from Galway, the predominant complexion of the Sinn Fein administration is not very red, or even very pink. Sinn Fein represent the agricultural, Roman Catholic part of Ireland, which is naturally conservative. Belfast, in unionist Ulster, has the largest socialist minority of any city, as shown by representation in the city corporation council.

Arthur Griffith, the acting president in the absence of Mr. De Valera and the leading spirit in the movement, is temperamentally a conservative. He is tremendously interested in the American idea of federalism and constitutional democracy. He is known to be opposed to the Marxian philosophy, and his interest are largely agrarian. He has a very different personality from that of De Valera, and looks like one’s conception of a French Senator, with his carefully trimmed and pointed beard and his air of dignity and reserve. He is a close student of history, is opposed to war, and believes that passive resistance to authority is the most effective power. He is considered the “strong man” among Sinn Feiners.

The Minister of Agriculture is now in jail. He again is not a radical in the presently accepted sense of the word. He is a landed proprietor, considered to be the most progressive “gentleman farmer” In Ireland, and is a member of the executive committee of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, whose leader is Sir Horace Plunkett. He has devised a land scheme for the Irish republic. He is a protestant, a veteran of the great war, with a medal for distinguished service and a graduate of Christ Church College, Oxford, where he took first honors in economics. He is in prison for making a nationalist speech.

The Minister of Trade and Commerce would be in jail if the police could serve the warrant, which is out for his arrest. He is the man who organized the industrial commission for Ireland.

The Courts are under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Home Affairs, who is considered a very able man, not a radical, but a thoroughgoing Democrat. His ministry is responsible for the issuance of passports to would-be immigrants, for the Irish republic actually has established a passport bureau and put it into operation.

Many Times in Jail

The head of the Department of Public Information is another of the Irish ministers who lead a feverish existence escaping from the police. His prison record looks like that of “Jip the Blood,” but, as a matter of fact, he is a gentle, blond young man, who had much rather write poetry than propaganda, and who spent the long hours of his last internment writing a play. His hobby is the collection of first editions.

His chief personal complaint against the British police is in connection with a set of books. “The military who arrested me in 1916,” he complained, “took me in my apartment. I noticed that while the soldiers were searching me and collecting papers and documents around the room their officer, a good-looking young Englishman, was eyeing my books. When we were driving away in the military lorry he spoke about them with great enthusiasm, especially remarking a first edition of Oscar Wilde, which had excited his admiration. We were both book lovers, so we had a very interesting conversation all the way to the jail, where I certainly expected to be court-martialed and shot.

“But I wasn’t executed,” he concluded, “and I never saw my Oscar Wilde again.”