head of the association; but not otherwise. On Sunday, December 4th, the delegates drew up a reply to the British proposals, in accordance with the instructions received in Dublin. Collins did not go with the others when this reply was given to the British Ministers and was championed by Griffith ably and earnestly in the last effort that the founder of Sinn Fein ever made for external association. The British seized on a remark of Gavan Duffy’s to break up the meeting and demand a formal rejection of their offer—which the Irish promised to give.
A break had come, but it was not quite complete. Lloyd George secured a meeting with Collins next morning, accepted the alternative oath which ultimately reached the Free State Constitution, and promised to secure the essential unity of Ireland by reducing the Six Counties to their Unionist core, which is uneconomic. In the afternoon, the last conference began. On finance, defence and trade, concessions were made. Fiscal autonomy went so far beyond all Home Rule proposals of the past that it gilded the prospect in the eyes of persons who thought first and last of economics. The revised oath was accepted by the English. In fine, a Dominion settlement was offered, stripped of the reservations which had attached to the offer rejected in the Summer. However, it meant that Ireland must surrender sovereign status and enter the empire.
Lloyd George refused Griffith’s request for a week’s adjournment, in order to lay this plan before the Dáil.
“You must sign the agreement for a Treaty or else quit,” Lloyd George said: “and then both sides will be free to resume whatever warfare they can wage against each other.”
Griffith said: “I will give the answer of the Irish Delegation at nine to-night; but, Mr. Prime Minister, I personally will sign this agreement and recommend it to my countrymen.”
Every Delegate,” Lloyd George said, “must sign the document and undertake to recommend, or there can be no agreement.”
He then delivered his infamous speech, which threatened instant war if the delegates did not sign by ten o’clock. He had two letters for Craig, one proclaiming peace, the other war; and would send one of them by the special train leaving at ten. “You can have until then to decide, but no longer, whether you will give peace or war to your country,” declared the intriguer who, as subsequently transpired, had written to Carson as early as May 29, 1916: “My Dear Carson. I enclose Greer’s draft proposition. We must make it clear that, at the end of the provisional period Ulster does not, whether she like it or not, merge in the rest of Ireland. Will you show this to Craig.”
The document was not accepted until after 11 o’clock ; for two of the delegates took two hours to persuade in a scene of dreadful anguish at Hans Place. The English were laughing in Downing Street while they waited the tortured Irishmen’s return. “The room rang with laughter,” Sir Austen Chamberlain afterwards wrote. At 11.15, the Irish delegation returned. Griffith announced that the document would be signed, but some details were to be adjusted. In the talk which followed, Collins secured that the Irish defence forces should not be termed “ local “—a point of some consequence which the English yielded as one more bait. At one o’clock, on the morning of December 6th, the corrections were finished. At 2.20 a.m., final drafts had been typed, and the signatures were appended.
The treaty had been signed which was to split Ireland from top to bottom.
President de Valera was surprised when the evening newspaper of December 6th gave news that an agreement had been signed in London; for he had known that the English still were resisting external association twenty-four hours earlier, and he did not entertain the suspicion that the delegation would go behind its strict instructions. One of the delegates, Mr. Eamonn Duggan, reached Dublin and brought a despatch to the President, which he handed to him a few moments before 8 o’clock, when the terms signed in London were released to the world.
“Is there recognition of the Crown in 