 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 it? “—Austin Stack asked Duggan. “Then why did you sign? How could you? “ “It was war in five minutes,” Duggan answered, “ unless we signed.”
By the release of the terms before the President had seen them, the English secured an advantage in propaganda; for the Treaty was in every newspaper on the morning of the 7th, accompanied by a chorus of enthusiasm. The whole English world, of course, acclaimed “England’s generosity,” and many people in Ireland who had lived through three years of mounting terror were so much relieved by the news of peace that their feeling overwhelmed their judgment. The President had had no opportunity to consider or pronounce upon the agreement, and it was assumed pretty generally that it had the approval of the whole Government, since no one guessed that Lloyd George had split that band of brave Irishmen and secured the signatures of some in defiance of their orders. Many of us can remember as vividly and painfully as if it happened yesterday our mental comment as we read the treaty:
“The Crown, the Empire, the Oath are accepted; the Six Counties can vote out; here is mere Dominion Home Rule without even a united Ireland. So this was the best that our Republican Government could do for us! Well, if those men say so, what can common folk do but make the best of it?
Little we guessed the terrible truth. Over some houses, by impudent people, flags were put out on the morning that the posters announced a treaty reached; but, by a wave of doubt that ran through the land like a chill, they were taken in the same day. In the country parish where the present writer lived, a collection was taken in the morning for a tar barrel, but the barrel never was burnt. In twelve hours, the nation was stricken by the suspicion that something was wrong.
Meanwhile, available members of the Cabinet met in Dublin. On appeal of Mr. Cosgrave that the delegates should be heard before they were repudiated, the President summoned them back for a conference next day; and all were present at a fateful meeting on Dece