advantages they failed. The British Government built up an extraordinarily effective Intelligence Service in the very heart of a hostile country, and I am able to state that of the corps of agents sent from England into Ireland only one was detected and murdered, although in some cases local agents, recruited in Ireland, were found out and murdered. A peculiar feature, which was extremely puzzling to the authorities, was the number of Irish who were killed by Sinn Feiners as 'spies,' who had nothing whatever to do with the authorities and who were guiltless of conveying information of any kind. In most cases it is thought that these were private murders, possibly in pursuit of old faction feuds, but carried out under the all-embracing Irish cloak of patriotism.

One of the first results of an efficient Government Intelligence Service was that it kept the leading Sinn Feiners" on the run," and their staff work was embarrassed thereby. Even so small a unit as a company of soldiers needs a regularly organised office to keep pace with the daily routine work. The activities of the police reduced the Irish Republican Army to keeping its whole staff work in a hand-bag, and at irregular intervals Mr. Richard Mulcahy, the Chief of Staff,' escaped only just in time, leaving the bag of papers as prey to the interested authorities.

The Government policy of continual 'grabraiding' and the intermittent interception of postal and telegraphic communications broke down the whole system of the Sinn Fein Organisation, and at the period when the Truce was signed the Sinn Fein activists were practically beaten. They

had reached their maximum recruitment and their highest pitch of organisation-yet they were done.

Martial Law was proclaimed in certain areas but failed to function efficiently, because in point of fact it was only the substitution of Military Law and Procedure for the ordinary Civil Law. English Martial Law must in no wise be confused with the ruthless Continental system of Drumhead Courtmartial-a system which has no place in English military law.

Doubtless the authorities are open to criticism in that they did not secure more convictions; and although the British Court-martial system is in its procedure but a substitution of military judges for the usual judge and jury system, the mechanism of prosecution often broke down because of the impossibility of adducing legal proof when no witness dared come forward under pain of being assassinated by Sinn Fein.

Perhaps the most astounding circumstance of all in the suppression of Sinn Fein was that during the whole of 1919-1921 the British Government (which by many was supposed to be committing nameless atrocities on the innocent Irish) did not close the country to Press investigators or even to admittedly hostile political expeditions of IrishAmericans, extremist Labour representatives, and others. These deputations were received by Sinn Fein and sent on special propaganda tours. A fortnight in the hands of Sinn Fein usually sent the investigators back as confirmed Sinn Fein enthusiasts, but those whom circumstance obliged to stay a month or so went back convinced and voluble coercionists!

To summarise the whole development of the Irish Secret Societies since 1500 A.D., it would be sufficient to say that their energies have been directed not only against Britain but against authority in whatsoever form directed. Latterly the Irish have thrown over the authority of the Catholic Church and have substituted for it a vague non-moral heresy of their own which I have been careful throughout this work to call the Irish Catholic Church, as distinct from the allembracing world creed of Roman Catholicism. Here and there are passages, which, viewed in any other light, might give offence to earnest Catholics, but I trust that I have made my meaning and my differentiation clear.

Sinn Fein may slake its passions and obtain with the Free State what its personnel desiresthe fruits of office; but there is not room for all. The minority who do not obtain office will, in due course, become the popular party in Ireland, and there is only one political creed open to them. Beneath Sinn Fein lie the seeds of Sovietism; Conolly's doctrine has not been spread in vain, and it is likely to become the rallying post of the disappointed. Even during the Truce of 1921, one or two untoward political manifestations occurred. Cork Harbour declared itself a Soviet; Drogheda later followed suit.

In April, 1919, the proclamation of Limerick City as a military area led to a general strike. The National Labour Executive took the matter up, and Catral O'Shannon urged the Irish Socialist party to declare all Ireland a Soviet Republic. His colleague Johnson, who was attending the

Internationale at Berne, hastened home, while O'Shannon came to England to implore the help of extremists of British nationality and resident aliens. His appeal for concerted effort by the Bolsheviks of South Wales, the Clyde and Ireland "to end the white terror now prevailing was, however, doomed to disappointment, for apparently the British revolutionaries were more interested in affairs nearer home.

The Limerick Soviet was already printing its own money, notes of from one to ten shillings finding circulation among the deluded. The Sinn Fein Government had, however, little use at the time for a rival republic in Ireland, and pressure and appeal destroyed the first Irish Soviet experiment.

In America the identity of interests between Irish-Catholic communities and extremist Labour organisations is increasingly manifest. Kindred phenomena have been noticed among the Irish in Australia. In the United States, Labour movements provide an excellent stalking-horse for covert interference in Irish affairs, and the IrishAmerican Labour League is an interesting body, which has, however, little connection with the real working man. Its President is Emmet O'Reilly; O'Flaherty, Editor of The Irish People is VicePresident; and Ryan, an official of the Warehousemen's Union, is organiser for New York. All three are members of the A.A.R.I.R., and the influence of the group on waterside affairs might conceivably be convenient to sympathisers engaged in gunrunning to Ireland.

CHAPTER XVI

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IRISH CRIME

THE motives of members of Irish Secret Societies appear to a Briton to be wholly criminal; an Irishman, on the other hand, will deplore the method, but condone or even uphold the motive. Ideas on the subject of the psychology of the Irish Gael must necessarily be purely individual theories and may quite conceivably reinforce the old-established truism that the English can never understand the Irish. But, to my mind, the root of the matter lies in the inability of the Gael to conceive the abstract fetish of Law as it appears to the Briton and other dominant northern races.

The British are law-abiding, not because they are stupid, long-suffering or indolent, but because they have a natural reverence for the law as the foundation of social stability. This conception of social order and mutual responsibility for the benefit of the State as a whole is largely lacking among the Irish people of the South and West. The imposition of English Law, or indeed any form of law, has always savoured to them of tyranny and oppression, and has been repugnant to them not so much as a hindrance to their national selfexpression, but as a personal matter, as a bar to personal self-expression. To the Irish the law has