REBELS AT KILLALOE

Hokitika Guardian, 29 December 1917, Page 1

REBELS AT KILLALOE

THE WOMEN’S ARMY. DE VALERA’S TALK. KILI.Ai.OE, Oct 27 The Glan-na-Gael girls of Killaloe —and they are very pretty girls and mightily . industrious—have sworn allegiance to the Republican Army, and Commandant De Valera has smiled his benediction upon them in a picturesque and richly Irish ceremony. Killaloe, famous for its beauty, and for the gentleman renowned in song as being born “ contagions ” to it, was bathed in a wonderful glow of sunset as the boys from Clare crossed the historic bridge into Tipperary, met the Tipperary contingent of the rebel army with drums beating and fifes playing, and went roaring thi’ough the town. Fifteen hundred more loyal and trusty rebels were expected from elsewhere to swell the demonstration, but they wei’e either lost on the way or diverted elsewhere at the last moment. They —or the most rampageous of them —may have , been found at Listowel Races, where there,, Avere a “ One ” shindy of cracked crowns, a baton charge, and some revolver shooting to Avind up tlie day’s sport. These little allairs pass as nothing—in Ireland. There was peace at Killaloe ; nobody’s ‘‘ faytures ” wore scattered. An “ ammunition column ” pf cars, driven at battery speed up the hill, Avas the main feature of the procession. It was headed by tivo tiny boys'Avearing the full uniform of the Irish Volunteers and riding longtailed ponies. They knocked an old Avoman over in the mud and left her lying there, aud that’s all the physical* damage that was done at Killaloe. Valora, Avith a priest at his side in the staff motor-car, was more damaging. He told the crowd which pressed around him to be prepared day and night for battle. And they cheered. He told them that the dread shadoAV of conscription in Ireland still gloomed over them with a sinister threat, [t was not dead but sleeping. At any moment it might come. The Sinn Fein crowd mniv mured. I stood by the clmrch-yard wall and watched their faces. They were long faces, greatly troubled. Even the red sunset could not dye their pallor.

TIKES. “Anyway,” said the valiant commandant, “ if they do come to fetch us they won’t get me—(De V. is of military age and Class A, I should imagine, by the look of him) -atnl you must see to it that they don’t get you.! (Cheers.) If they come to fetch you it will be your bodies they will drag away, and maybe some of the escort will be carried off in the same litter. If you have got to fight it is not England you will be fighting for. (Cheers.) II you have got to go into the trenches it isn’t the trenches' in Flanders you’ll be in, but the trenches in Ireland! (Again cheers.) If you have got to meet bayonet charges—and you will have to—there’s something better than the bayonet to meet them with. There are still the J famous ten-toot pikes r fathers fought enemy with in earlier] days. Get them. (“ We have got them !”) Then get more of them ! A .vow of ten-foot "pikes will beat a row of bayonets any day. With them in your hands they can’t reach you with the bayonet.” That was the prescription made up and served out by De Valera to the simple lads of Killaloe. It was hot gospel to them. I saw their faces twinge at the mention of the word “bayonet”;. I watched them clear again when De Valefa gripped an imaginary pike and showed them how to use it.

Now to what earthly—or to what hellish—end is this hawk-eyed young fire-brand shaping ? What, in the name of everything that is human', dees he mean b_v it! Why, in the name of everything that is human, is he foaming up and down the country in this way? Cannot some wise head, some firm hand, stop him before it is too late ? Now and again you can laugh at his fireworks and write lightly of his amazing autumn manoeuvres,’ as I have done. But the Killaloe speech (an out-of-the-way place is Killaloe) has opened my eyes to the very grave danger of this comic opera soldiery. I can see rpiite plainly what is at the back of De Valera’s mutinous mind. He is out to smash the Convention. He says he can do it and that he will do it. Why ? Because if the Convention strikes a fair road to settlement there will be no more use for Sinn Fein as it now exists with all its machinations and its militarv flair.

I.OOI'IIOT.K FOR YOUNG MKX. vSiun Fein’s enormous popularity in Ireland is due to the fact. that it is a Heaven-sent loophole for the young men of Ireland to evade conscription. With the Convention steering to harbour, the Sinn Fein ship will go to . the. bottom and Othello’s occupation will be gone.

To the men in the Killaloe crowd De Valera showed this, aud when he had done and the cheers were over he turned his back to the army aud addressed the deputation of pretty girls who had come up to make a presentation to them. He told them that no great movement had prospered unless it had the women behind it. That was the reason why Sinn Fein was marching to glory ; the women of Ireland were in it and of it. They had done splendid things —magnificent things. They must be ready to do more—as their sisters had done in Easter week. They must be prepared to go into the firing-line even. They must be ready to nurse the wounded, to urge the army on — read}' in a hundred ways when the time came.

With eyes alight —blazing —the colleens of Killaloe cheered their leader clamorously. They scrambled to touch his hand, cried him success and happiness and victory. Gallantly he raised his hat (lie was not in uniform on this occasion), and, bidding them prepare, rocle away into the blood-red sunset.