IRISH REPRISALS

New Zealand Tablet, 11 August 1921, Page 17

IRISH REPRISALS

Following is the indictment of Sir John Simon which appeared in the correspondence columns of the London Times for April 23, and was subsequently, by permission of that journal, published in pamphlet form by the Peace with Ireland Council:

AUXILIARY DIVISION’S RECORD.

Sir,The Prime Minister’s reply, published in your columns on the 20th inst., to the protest of Anglican and Free Church leaders against the policy of reprisals in Ireland, raises in the most precise form a moral issue which lies at the root of British conceptions of civilised administration. .

That issue is nothing less than the question whether it is permissible for the agents of a Christian and civilised community to attempt to repress and discourage outrage committed by unidentified individuals who are “on the run,” by visiting the whole countryside where such an outrage occurs with counter-outrage by way of vengeance or collective punishment, so that the innocent suffer without redress and a condition of official terrorism is set up which-it is vainly hoped will promote peace with Ireland. The Prime Minister’s attempt to defend the proceedings of his agents during the last nine mouths also lifts a corner of the veil which has been so elaborately thrown over what those agents have really been doing. Some of the admissions which he is constrained to make as , to their fiShaviour are of the gravest character, and are in start-

ling contradiction with previous Ministerial assurances.

Mr. Lloyd George tells us that in July, 1920, he decided to create a new force in Ireland called the Auxiliary Division, and he complains that the authors of the protest should describe this force as “irregular.” One of the marks of Regular troops is that they wear uniform when discharging their duties, and Mr. Lloyd George describes the Auxiliaries as doing so. But two days before the Prime Minister wrote his letter, there was a lamentable and fatal affray at Castleconnell* between two bodies of Crown forces, neither of which was in uniform, and each of which mistook the other for members of the Republican Army. And on the very day on which Mr. Lloyd George’s letter was circulated the Attorney-General for Ireland stated in the House of Commons that one of these bodies consisted of Auxiliaries on active duty “in plain clothes.”

The facts about the creation of the Auxiliary JMvision, whether its members deserve to be called “Irregulars” or not, are plain enough. It was recruited in London for temporary service in Ireland by public advertisement and by the offer of a high rate of pay; the recruits for the most part were not Irishmen, and their actions show that they regard Ireland as a country which is inhabited by an inferior race, which it is their business to overawe and their privilege to bully. These men have received the minimum of training for their special duties, and the evidence is overwhelming that their discipline is so lax that many of them are often under the influence of liquor. I have before me first-hand evidence that within the last few weeks some of them are making it their boast that they are not under the effective control either of the military or of the police authorities, and that, whatever may have been the original composition of the force, some of its members assert that their now include men who are not ex-officers at all. The record and behaviour of members of the Regular army in Ireland are very different, and we owe it to them to insist that there is the widest distinction between their relations with the civil population and those which the “deplorable excesses” (I use Mr. Lloyd George’s own words) of the Auxiliary Division have succeeded in creating.

The Prime Minister now tells us that, he “will not attempt to deny that deplorable excesses have been committed” by ,the Auxiliary Division. He, however, contends that the worst period was in the early days of the force. He confesses that “a certain number of undesirables have got into the corps,” and that some of the Auxiliaries “have undoubtedly been guilty of unjustifiable acts.” And in order to prove how much better things are, he produces statistics for the last three months. During this-period of improved conduct, he states that 334 members either of the Auxiliary Division or of the Royal Irish Constabulary have been deprived of their posts, either as the result of prosecution or of sentence by court-martial or as being unsuitable to be members of the force.

Of this total, dismissed men belonging to the Auxiliary Division actually amount to five per cent, of the total strength of that force, so that at a time when the Auxiliary Division was on its best behaviour it is found necessary to get rid of them at the rate of twenty per cent, per annum! Such is the highwater mark which the Prime Minister’s agents have attained, and he leaves us to imagine how much worse their conduct must have -'been when their “deplorable excesses” were unchecked.

Are we to understand that the rank and file of the “Black-and-Tans” behaved better than this Corps d’elite? If so, no stronger condemnation of the ex-officers who are said to compose the Auxiliary Division can be conceived.

* Details of this incident have since been made public by the reading, in both Houses of Parliament, of a, letter from Mr. W. Harrison Cripps, a distinguished surgeon, and brother to Lord Parmoor. Mr. Cripps was staying with his wife at the hotel where the affray took place. In the course of his description he says, “Some dozen or so men rushed* along the passage and up the staircase yelling like Red Indians and firing as rapidly as possible. There was no kind of order, each man firing right and left.

. , . I could see out of the window a large, number of men in the street, firing up and down, and the inhabitants standing with their arms over their'heads.”

If not, the Prime Minister’s statistics of official reproof are obviously imperfect.

In this earlier period occurred the sack of Balbriggan on September 21 (when Sir Hamar Greenwood admits that, by way of reprisal for the shooting of two constables, 150 men visited the town in motor-lorries at night, destroyed the cottages of the poor as well as a large factory, and murdered two men against whom no charge had been made); the attack on Trim on September 26, after the wounding of a constable (when the town hall was gutted, the hotel was attacked with a machine-gun, and the whole population was exposed to indiscriminate violence); the reprisals on Mallow on September 29 (when public as well as private buildings were burnt, and anyone who tried to quench the flames was fired at): and the reprisals at Tubercurry on October 2 (when four motor-lorries of armed men, after breaking into licensed premises and drinking there, fired.the principal shops of the place, smashed up buildings', and completely destroyed a co-operative creamery). It is not without significance that after these “deplorable excesses” the Prime Minister made a speech on Ireland on October 11 at Carnarvon in which he had not one single word to say by way of rebuke or restraint of these proceedings, and that on October 20, in the House of Commons, the Chief Secretary for Ireland was pleased to say: “I have yet to find one authenticated case of a member of this Auxiliary Division being accused of anything but the highest conduct characteristic of them.” Yet exactly six months later the Prime Minister is constrained to admit that in this very period there have been “deplorable excesses, and . that “undesirables” in this corps of officers and gentlemen' have been “guilty of unjustifiable acts.”

What is the explanation why, in the autumn of last year, the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary spent their time in trying to conceal the real character of the proceedings of the new forces which they had let loose in Ireland? It was because a policy of terrorism had been decided on, but it was thought impolitic to , avow it. It was because they hoped that in a few weeks or months the dirty work would bo over, and "the success it had secured would conceal the methods' by which it had been obtained. Thus, on October 25, Sir Hamar Greenwood told the House of ..Commons, “The policy of the Government has succeeded, and succeeded rapidly. The total number of outrages has rapidly decreased.” If he was to say so to-day, his statement would carry as much conviction as if he were to assert that the city of Cork had been destroyed bv spontaneous combustion. On November 9, at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, the Prime Minister assured his fellowguests that he had “got murder by the throat.” On November 15 he told the House of Commons, “we are simply enforcing law in Ireland, and I believe we are doin<r it successfully.” Mr. Lloyd George would hardly have produced the same comforting impression if he had said then (as he says now) that his agents, instead of simply enforcing law, were themselves guilty of “deplorable excesses.” On November 18 Mr. Lloyd George cheerfully announced hat he thought things in Ireland were getting much IT./’ o Mre extraord,nar -Y still, on November 24 the nef Secretary stated: “I am doing my best, and have done from the start, to prevent reprisals, and I have succeeded. let within the last week there has been widespread burning and destruction in Kerry in reprisal for the murder of an officer, and similar reprisals have been officially announced and carried out in Tipperary No wonder the Prime Minister was reduced to speechlessness when he was asked (on March 17) whether he approved of official reprisals. E 1 wonder that Mr. Austin Chamberlain (on April 19) declared that “official reprisals” was a crni which he did not recognise, and declined to answer the question how they could be justified in Ireland , when sell!. d ° Plmon . throughout the world denounced them seven years ago in Belgium. j r T* 16 ] ! >n ™° Minister does his utmost to persuade the fromTb T S ° f thiS C ° Wtry that 1,6 has been engaged e . 'Panning in sternly repressing the , deplorable excesses of is agents. On the contrary, he was not found one word, to say m rebuke of them as long as he thought there remained the slightest prospect of their methods

succeeding. His condonation has encouraged . every wild and reckless spirit to further outrage. The Report of German Atrocities in Belgium (Cd. 7894, p. 16) truly observes: “When once troops have been encouraged in a career of terrorism, the more savage and brutal natures, of whom there are some in every large army, are liable to run to wild excess, more particularly in those regions where they are least subject to observation and control.” No one who is acquainted with the recent proceedings of members of this force will accept the view that, after the patronage and protection which they have enjoyed, the recent dismissals have turned them into a force which, in Mr. Lloyd George’s words, will “command the admiration of posterity.” Non tali auxilio , nee defensoribus istis Tcmpus erjci.

So much for the success of the policy of counter-out-rage. What about its moral justification? Mr. Lloyd George challenges religious opinion in this country on this subject. He insinuates that in the presence of outrage and murder committed by desperate men against members of the Crown forces there is nothing wrong in the adoption of corresponding methods by those who ought to be the upholders of law and order. This is a doctrine which is subversive of the first principles of civilised government. One of the chief differences between civilised administration and barbarous administration consists in this, that a civilised Government, in wielding executive powers for the detection and suppression of crime, secures that innocent people shall not suffer at the hands of the authorities for wrongs committed by others; and that even suspected people, instead of being shot like dogs by armed agents of the Crown, should be arrested and brought before properly constituted tribunals capable of administering unbiased justice and furnishing full security for the accused to defend themselves.

This is the moral issue which the Prime Minister’s latest declaration clearly raises. It remains to be seen whether the leaders of organised religion in this country will take up the challenge. One of them, at any rate, has very effectively disposed of the monstrous insinuation that those who denounce reprisals perpetrated by servants of the Crown are condoning the shocking acts of violence for which Sinn Fein is responsible. “The man,” declared the Archbishop of Canterbury in the House of Lords on February 22, “who says—and there are not wanting those who either say or imply— because we criticise some part of the Administration, or its apparent ineptitude in a fearfully grave matter, we are condoning Sinn Fein outlages, or shielding, or excusing, or minimising their wickedness, is so stupidly ignorant that his words may be disregarded. If he'"‘is not ignorant, but informed', and still says so, then I say bluntly that what he says is a lie. It is a. question, not of politics, but of ethics, a question of right and wrong, the ordinary abiding principle of right and wrong in public affairs. Not by calling in the aid of the devil will you cast out devils or punish devilry.” I submit, therefore, that the policy of reprisals is both politically disastrous and morally wrong. Instead of restoring peace it is intensifying war. Instead of vindicating British prestige, it is exposing us to the scorn of the world. It is adding day by day to the store of bitter memories which keep Britain and Ireland apart. It is turning Mr. Lloyd George’s heroics about the rights of small nations into nauseating cant. It is undermining the character and self-control of hundreds of young Englishmen by permitting them to indulge in deplorable excesses of every kind. It is directing the energies of hundreds of young Irishmen into the horrible channels of assassination and outrage, when their inextinguishable devotion to their own land ought to be working out a better and happier future for Ireland. . Surely it has become plain that the policy and method o reprisals must be entirely abandoned, that these new forces must be wholly withdrawn and disbanded, and that a truce must be offered in which a new solution may be song tby mutual conciliation and understanding. —vYours faithfully,

JOHN SIMON. 59 Cadogan Gardens, S.W.,

April 23, 1921.