principles, evidently felt some doubt about the moral law, and asked for the co-operation of the Irish Catholic Bishops who had been summoned to Maynooth by Cardinal Logue.

"

The Bishop issued the following manifesto :

'An attempt is being made to enforce conscription on Ireland against the will of the Irish nation and in defiance of the protests of its leaders. In view especially of the historic relations between the two countries from the very beginning up to this moment, we consider that conscription forced in this way upon Ireland is an oppressive and inhuman law which the Irish have a right to resist by every means that are consonant with the law of God. .

This manifesto sealed the alliance between Sinn Fein and the Irish Catholic Hierarchy, and at the same time abandoned to a potentially successful Germany those other Catholics in Belgium, France and the United States, to whom appeals on behalf of "poor ill-treated Catholic Ireland" have been liberally made by Irish propagandists since.

The resistance to conscription counselled by the Bishops was founded on their acceptance of the Sinn Fein party's claim of the distinct nationality of Ireland as an entity without the bonds of Empire. Nothing can palliate it and nothing has so besmirched the loyalty of the whole body of Roman Catholics within the Empire. In the minds of the lowly Irish and those of their scantily-educated priests, it set the seal of religion on opposition to the law.

Autumn of 1918 saw the catastrophic defeat of the Central Empires and destroyed the last hope of German aid for Ireland. And so to the Irish revolutionaries the victory of the Allies seemed nothing but defeat. The General Election of 1918

saw seventy-three victorious Sinn Fein candidates, the majority of whom were or had been imprisoned, returned out of the total of 106 Irish constituencies. Their method of pressing Ireland's claim to consideration was to abstain from taking their seats at Westminster. The British public, disgusted by the Irish national conduct throughout the War, paid not the slightest attention to this development of a long-forgotten Hungarian's policy, and Ireland's claim to be represented at the Peace Conference of the victors in the War which she had consistently repudiated, contemptuously

was

rejected by the Allies.

CHAPTER XII

THE I.R.B. AND THE I.R.A.

THE year 1919 shows us a period of incubation during which the policy of the secret societies and Sinn Fein in general underwent certain developments. The long-hoped-for war between England and Germany which, as we have shown, had been foreseen from 1910 by the leaders of the Irish revolutionaries, had brought its opportunities, but had not brought about the realisation of the dream of an Irish Republic. Germany had gone down in disaster, and Sinn Fein, despite its meaning of Ourselves alone,' had to seek fresh alliances.

In the spring President' De Valera and one or two others were helped to escape from prison by the activities of Michael Collins and other members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who had developed a considerable organisation among Sinn Fein sympathisers and Irish in England. There was no whole-hearted pursuit of De Valera by the authorities, who are never regretful when an Irish political criminal takes flight across the Atlantic. The question of extradition was not even mooted, although in the strict letter of the law De Valera was even more guilty of criminal offence against the Allies and conspiracy with Germany than of a mere political offence.

Events in Irish-American circles before the coming of De Valera had been developing a certain restiveness, and within the world of IrishAmericanism was growing the germ of an organisation which was later to threaten the hitherto unchallenged supremacy of Judge Cohalan and John Devoy, now affectionately known as 'Sean Fear' (the old man '--but in all truth an 'old man of the mountain' so far as Irish welfare was concerned !). A new figure had sprung up in the shape of ex-Captain Maloney, a neurasthenic Irish-American who had served in the British forces for a while, who had been wounded and who had returned to the States in April, 1917, where he identified himself with Irish politics and declined the honour of a Military Cross which had been awarded him.

Maloney joined the Envoy' Dr. McCartan, and soon converted him to his views, which can be briefly explained as the fundamental doctrine that the Irish organisations of Ireland alone had a right to determine their policy and that funds raised in America for the Irish cause should only be administered by the accredited representatives of the Irish people and devoted to policies decided on by them. This, as can be seen, was not only a root blow at the hitherto unchallenged power of Cohalan and Devoy, who as leaders of the Clan were also the political bosses who controlled the Irish vote, but was in essence an assault on the most vulnerable point of all Irish organisations -the disposal of the funds, a matter not usually capable of withstanding a critical audit.

The first open hostility was shown at the

National Council of the Irish Race Convention held on March 12th, 1919, at the Park Hotel, New York. This National Council was a new organisation promoted by the Friends of Irish Freedom and the Clan-na-Gael, in order to repeat the early history of the Land League of America days, when the holding of an Irish Race Convention enabled the Clan to obtain absolute control of the whole network of Irish organisations in the country.

Maloney and McCartan attacked both Cohalan and Devoy, on the ground that their interference with measures presented to the American Congress to assist Irish claims had been inimical to the real interests. They were supported by the Chairman of the meeting, Father Hurton, and by the wellknown Joseph McGarrity.

The Devoy-Cohalan group countered with whispered accusations that the ex-Captain Maloney was a British agent, a charge they based later on certain connections Maloney had previously had with Shane Leslie and others who were temporarily connected with British official affairs in the U.S.A.; and later, on April 21st, Devoy attempted to effect a reconciliation with McCartan. Both sides alleged different reasons for the quarrel, but in the main the real issue appears to have been that Cohalan issued a message to the Press which did not mention the Irish Republic in so many words when the announcement was made of the Sinn Fein victory at the polls of the General Election of 1918. A message' officially' issued by McCartan and phrased by Maloney was thus excluded. The Maloney-McCartan party contested that Cohalan was completely out of touch