door. Mrs. MacCurtain went down to open the door and four men with blackened faces brushed by her, made their way to the Mayor's bedroom, called on him to come out; there were a few words, and he was shot down by them.

The crime raised great excitement, and after prolonged sittings a local and partisan jury returned a verdict which was manifestly out of keeping with the facts. They attributed the murder to members of the police and brought in a verdict against Mr. Lloyd George, General Macready and various others.

The Times of March 29th contained the following:--

"A well-informed correspondent writes: It has now been ascertained that on the night of the 17th-18th March there was a meeting of the Circle of the Irish Republican Brotherhood attended by the Lord Mayor of Cork, Alderman Thomas MacCurtain, and other prominent persons. At this meeting seven members of the I.R.B. were expelled. It is significant that one of the persons present was shot after leaving the meeting, and that two nights later the Lord Mayor was shot. It is stated that at this meeting accusations were made of infidelity to the Cause of the I.R.B."

The next Lord Mayor of Cork was Terence MacSwiney, who, at the time of the murder of MacCurtain, was Commandant of the first Cork Brigade of the Irish Volunteers. Later, when MacSwiney was hunger-striking in Brixton Gaol, a published word from Dail Eireann could have absolved him from his pledge and saved his life. That word never came, and there are those who, looking into dark things, hold that the shadow of Thomas MacCurtain was the factor that withheld the granting to Terence MacSwiney of the right to live.

CHAPTER XIII

PROGRESS OF THE CAMPAIGN

THE year 1920 saw the birth of that systematic campaign of outrage which continued until 1921, and which the Irish apologists term 'guerilla warfare'; and it is necessary to make clear the system on which this shameful campaign was based. It depended on one main principle--the hiding of the young assassins behind the whole body of Irish civilians. The Irish Republican Army was not a uniformed body of men, its methods were not those of civilised warfare, and it partook far more of the nature of an organised murder gang than that of any irregular body of patriots who have ever been granted military status.

We may leave the exact interpretation of the standing of the I.R.A. to the more sensitive among the Irish, but there never was and never could be the slightest recognition of these people, either as an army, or as legitimate belligerents. Whereas it is quite possible for officers and men of regularly constituted crown or national forces to meet on the same social planes after hostilities between their nations have ceased and the incidental bitterness of war has died down, it is inconceivable that officers or men of any force could now or at any future time accept members of the I.R.A. as

participants in the honourable brotherhood of

arms.

The rank and file were doubtless in many cases convinced that their actions were justifiable and patriotic and were sanctioned by the vague tenets of guerilla warfare, and such men must be regarded as misguided rather than as conscious wrong-doers. Nothing, on the other hand, can palliate the criminality of their leaders and that of any men with pretence to education among their ranks.

It may not improperly be remarked here, concerning this question of the morality of murder, that the natural court of appeal for a nominally religious race such as the Irish was the Irish Catholic Church. The failure of that Church to take strong steps toward the suppression of the outrage is, perhaps, sufficient indication of its

status.

The I.R.A. adopted much of the paper formality of a regular force, but it remained a murder gang, and the gloss of military phrases and the assumption of military titles makes no difference. A favourite military activity of the I.R.A. was to throw bombs at police lorries in the crowded streets of Dublin. In these outrages the spectators and innocent passers-by suffered, the police were rarely hit, and as the bombers fled after throwing the bombs after the cars, they, too, did not suffer heavy casualties, although they lost many more than were lost by police or military. The operations in the country were similar, and in no case was uniform worn. The principle was the concentration of civilians to a spot where arms were

stored.

The arms would be served out and either an ambush laid for the road patrols or else a police barrack would be bombarded all night. In some cases the lives of captured police or military were spared, but in most cases no quarter was granted. Sinn Fein prisoners, captured and interned by Crown forces, exceeded 4,000.

The campaign was not confined to Ireland, and a certain amount of senseless incendiarism and attempts to assassinate or burn the homes of relatives of the R.I.C. men in England was conducted by Sinn Fein elements in this country. The main focus of infection was an organisation known as the Irish Self-Determination League. This was the usual pseudo-political, nominally innocent, organisation which embraced disaffected Irish and other subversive elements and which was controlled by the Divisional Centres of the I.R.B. in England. Recruiting from the SelfDetermination League, Sinn Fein Clubs were formed which corresponded to the civil side of the I.R.B. organisation. Out of the worst elements of these Sinn Fein Clubs and Irish Literary Societies sections of young desperadoes were recruited into the I.R.B., and, after the capture of the I.R.A. by the latter, these groups in England also claimed to be members of the I.R.A. At Manchester, Glasgow, and London, outrages, which were in the main abortive, were committed, and a number of criminals were caught and sentenced.

A peculiar feature was the difficulty with which adequate evidence to secure conviction could be found; the prisoners moving in the Irish element had advantages in that their normal associates

were also criminal in intent, if not in deed, and many of whose guilt there was little doubt had to be acquitted for lack of evidence strong enough to convict in English law. One degenerate youth, Maud Amphion Robinson, was acquitted of a charge with respect to arson near Red Lion Square, London, only to be caught red-handed a month or two later shooting at a policeman near Greenwich. He received an adequate sentence on the second occasion, but has since been amnestied and released.

In Liverpool the I.R.B. had a wide-spread organisation and used the Irish National Forester's Hall as a drilling station. Several of their leading men specialised in getting suspected murderers berths in some capacity on vessels bound for the States, and there, as well as at Glasgow, were agents who specialised in the illegal smuggling of arms into Ireland.

Women and boys played a considerable part in the murder campaign, the former as spies and arms agents, the latter as the pliant instruments of murder. The boys of nineteen or so were perhaps the most dangerous criminal element which the Crown forces had to encounter. A gang of six young pistol-armed ruffians found it easy to shoot down a solitary constable or an unarmed soldier walking out with a girl; and the young' hooligan element in towns is not infrequently criminally disposed, whether they are Neapolitans, Bowery 'boys,' or soldiers of the Irish Republican Army.

The Women's organisation was the Cumannna-mBan (The Irish Women's Council) and its executive was controlled by the I.R.B. through