Generals Maxwell
& Wilson
Two of a Kind
Oh!
you would bring me to your Queen, low at her feet to kneel,
Crave
mercy from her stony heart, and urge some mean appeal!
I
answer No! my knees will bend and prayers of mine arise
To
but one Queen, the Queen of Heaven, high-throned above the skies.
“When I am
finished, there will not be a whisper of sedition in Ireland for another 100
years.”
Such,
this latter, was the proud boast of Lieutenant General Sir John Grenfell
Maxwell KCB, KCMG, CVO, DSO, when he arrived in Dublin on the Friday of Easter
Week, 1916.
Such,
this former, was the firm answer and commitment of all right-thinking Irish men,
women and children; priest, prelate and pauper alike; and put into words in O’Ruairc’s
Request by T.D.Sullivan long before this contemptible excuse for an English
gentleman and soldier ever set foot on Irish soil.
This
was the man whose ignominious service record prior to his arrival on what was
never John Bull’s other island mentioned both Egypt and South Africa. In
“Lions
Led by Donkeys”, John Bourne, Director of the Centre for First World War
Studies of the University of Birmingham, described his life up to his Irish
sojourn as “a career of great distinction”. That distinction involved, in North
Africa, atrocities against both civilians and prisoners of war as an aid to
Lord Kitchener, the “Butcher of Khartoum”. In South Africa, as a senior general
himself now, he was aware of, and, indeed, had ultimate responsibility for the
Concentration Camps and the unforgivably inhumane treatment therein of old and
infirm Boer men and women, of younger Boer women and their children, and of
native Africans. In appalling circumstances, these all were held prisoner with
little or no food and with access to neither medicine nor medical treatment.
Into these hands which would most certainly “the multitudinous seas incarnadine”
did His Britannic Majesty’s Imperial Government commend for mercy those taken
prisoner during the Easter Uprising.
His
Britannic Majesty and His Imperial Government must have had some sense of
humour!
Mind
you, so must have the General.
After
he had had the leaders of the Uprising extra-judicially murdered, he had the
effrontery to write to the Catholic Bishops of Ireland directing them to remove
various, to him, suspect priests from active ministry. In his letter to Bishop
O’Dwyer he named two priests, Frs Hall and Bayes. These good men, like the
others, had preached against conscription and were thus deemed by Maxwell
dangerous menaces to all that he held dear. In directing one of his epistles to
the Most Reverend Dr Edward Thomas O’Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick, he was singularly
ill-advised. Dr O’Dwyer replied by means of an open letter written from
Kilmallock and published, first, in the County newspaper:
Sir
I beg to acknowledge
receipt of your letter of 12th instant which has been forwarded to me here.
I have read carefully
your allegations against Rev. Hall and Rev. Bayes but do not see in them any
justification for disciplinary action on my part. They are both excellent
priests, who hold strong national views, but I do not know that they have
violated any law, civil or ecclesiastical.
In your (previous) letter
of the 6th instant you appealed to me to help you in the furtherance of your
work as a military dictator of Ireland. Even if action of that kind was not
outside my province, the events of the past few weeks would make it impossible
for me to have any part in proceedings which I regard as wantonly cruel and
oppressive.
You remember the
Jameson raid1, when a number of buccaneers invaded a friendly state
and fought the forces of the lawful government. If ever men deserved the
supreme punishment it was they, but officially and unofficially, the influence
of the British government was used to save them and it succeeded. You took care
that no plea for mercy should interpose on behalf of the poor young fellows who
surrendered to you in Dublin. The first information which we got of their fate
was the announcement that they had been shot in cold blood.
Personally, I regard
your action with horror, and I believe that it has outraged the conscience of
the country. Then the deporting of hundreds and even thousands of poor fellows
without a trial of any kind seems to me an abuse of power as fatuous as it is
arbitrary and your regime has been one of the worst and blackest chapters in
the history of misgovernment of the country.
I have the honour to be,
Sir, your obedient servant.
Edward Thomas, Bishop
of Limerick
To General Sir J.G
Maxwell, Commander-in-Chief, the forces in Ireland
(Courtesy of the
Limerick Leader)
On
September 14, 1916, the good bishop, who the novelist Kate O’Brien described as
“brilliant and difficult”, was presented with the Freedom of the City of
Limerick. During his acceptance speech — a famous speech during which he
commented favourably upon the national spirit of resistance and which was
accredited by many as having a decisive effect upon the outcome of the
bye-election in East Clare — he posed a very pertinent question; a question which
was to be quoted later to great effect by, amongst others, Eamon de Valera
during the General Election to the Imperial Parliament at Westminster of
December 1918. The Most Reverend gentleman asked: “When Lord Wimborne and Mr
Devlin and Mr Redmond called on our young Irishmen to go to Flanders and give
their lives for Home Rule in Belgium, was it not natural that in view of the
state of their own country they should ask themselves if it was not all British
cant and hypocrisy, and in their indignation break out in rebellion?”
It
is perhaps worth noting that Maxwell was not the only British General of that time
to hate the Irish Catholic Nationalists. On Monday, October 21, 1918, Earl Haig
noted in his diary2:
“Trafalgar Day. At the
request of the Navy League, I sent a message to the President of the League
(the Duke of Buccleuch) for publication today. It seems to have given great
satisfaction both to Mercantile Marine as well as to the Royal Navy.
Doris (Lady Haig) and I
motored to London about 10am and I visited the War Office. General Davidson met
me. I also saw General Macdonagh A.G. (Adjutant General). I showed him my note
on proposals for an armistice. He agreed with me entirely. As regards manpower,
he stated that our latest figures showed that we are not able to maintain more
than 36 Divisions next year. At present we have 61 Divisions. I then saw the
C.I.G.S. (Chief of Intelligence to General Staff) General (Henry) Wilson. We
discussed the situation. I gathered that the main reason why he was in favour
of a “complete surrender” for terms of an armistice is on account of Ireland.
He is most keen that conscription should be applied to Ireland at once in order
to get us more men. And as a means of pacifying Ireland.”
Gerard J de Groot wrote
of General Wilson: “After a discussion on 21 October (1918), Haig concluded
that Wilson wanted to continue the War so that conscription could be enforced
in Ireland, and that country be pacified in the process.”3 Of
course, it need hardly be wondered at by which methods Wilson, supporter in
chief of the Curragh mutineers, seek to pacify Ireland!
But
Ireland was not to be pacified. For the poem ends:
And
now you ask my dying wish? My last and sole request
Is
that the scaffold built for me be fronted to the West,
Of
my dear country far away one glimpse I cannot see
Whenever
and however high you raise the gallow tree;
Yet
would I wish my last fond look should seek that distant shore;
So
turn my face to Ireland Sirs, of you I ask no more.
Notes
(1)
The Jameson Raid was an ineffective attempt to overthrow President Paul Kruger
of the Transvaal Republic. It took place over the New Year weekend of 1895/96.
It has been said that it helped to precipitate both the Second Boer War and the
Second Matabele War.
(2)
Private Papers of Douglas Haig, 1914-1919, “Being selections from the private
diary and correspondence of Field Marshall the Earl Haig of Bermersyde KT GCB
CMG, Edited by Robert Blake, published by Eyre & Spottiswoode, London 1952,
@p334.
(3)
Douglas Haig 1861-1928, Gerad J de Groot, Unwin Hyman, London 1988. At p392.)
O’Rourke’s
Request
(Brian
O’Ruairc - Prince of Breffni, AD1589)
You
ask me what defence is mine?
Here!
midst your armed bands,
You
only mock the prisoner, who is helpless in your hands!
What
would defence avail of me,
Though
good it be and true,
Here
in the heart of London town, with judges such as you?
You
gravely talk about my “crime”!
I
own no crime at all;
The
deeds you blame I’d do again should such a chance befall.
You
say I’ve helped the foreign foes,
Who
war against our Queen —
Well,
challenged so, I’ll proudly show what has my helping been:
On
that wild day, when near our coast
the
stately ships of Spain,
Caught
in a fierce and sudden storm for shelter sought in vain;
When,
wrenched and torn 'midst mountain waves
some
foundered in the deep,
And
others broke on sunken reefs and headlands rough and steep —
I
heard the cry that off my land
where
breakers rise and roar
The
sailors from a wrecking ship were striving for the shore.
I
hurried to the frightful scene,
my
generous people too,
Men,
women, and children came, with kindly deed to do.
We
saw them clutching spars and planks,
that
soon were washed away,
Saw
some bleeding on the rocks, low moaning where they lay;
Some
cast ashore, and back again dragged by the refluant wave,
When
one grip from a friendly hand would have sufficed to save.
We
rushed into the raging surf, watched every chance; and when
They
rose and rolled within our reach, we grasped the drowning men.
We
took them to our hearths and homes, and bade them there remain
’Till
they might leave with hope to reach their native land again.
This
is the “treason” you have charged! Well, treason let it be,
One
word of sorrow for this fault, you'll never hear from me.
I'll
only say, although you hate my race and creed and name,
Were
your folk in that dreadful plight I would have done the same.
Oh,
you would bring me to your Queen, low at her foot to kneel,
Crave
mercy from her stony heart, and urge some mean appeal!.
I
answer No! my knees will bend and prayers of mine arise
To
but one Queen, the Queen of Heaven, high throned above the skies.
And
now you ask my dying wish? My last and sole request
Is
that the scaffold built for me be fronted to the West,
Of
my dear country far away one glimpse I cannot see
Whenever
and however high you raise the gallow tree;
Yet
would I wish my last fond look should seek that distant shore;
So
turn my face to Ireland Sirs, of you I ask no more.
(Timothy
Daniel Sullivan 1827 – 1914)
