ad assumed the leadership. It was not that he sought to be leader. He did as his character, his sense of rightness, commanded him to do; and because he was so conspicuously gifted, he was followed. The prisoners became an ordered body even in their jailer’s grip.
Ireland was stirring. The Rising, the ballads that had broken from the nation’s heart, roused the people to their olden allegiance. In Roscommon, in Longford, by-elections were won by men who represented the Insurgent cause. Manifestly, the people had gone over to the Tri-colour of Easter Week. In an effort, after a year, to check the sweep of opinion over to the Prisoners, England sent the Prisoners home. We always remember that early Summer dawn over Dublin in 1917 when the ship brought our heroes back to us, and the streets were alive in the half-light with exultant folk.
England’s aim was to carry a measure of Home Rule, in which the Republicans would be represented by a small group, if at all, and she set up the famous Convention to get it adopted by everybody except the people who mattered. Griffith did one of the best deeds of his life in his skilful exposure of the rigging of the Convention; while, in the meantime, vital things happened.
One was the election of Eamon de Valera in the by-election in Clare by a swinging majority. Clare that won Emancipation by its election of Dan O’Connell now was the scene of another historic victory. Clare and de Valera were knit together in a union that always will be Clare’s great pride. The second vital thing was the adoption of de Valera, the hero of the fighting men, as the leader of Sinn Fein, the party in which all the patriotic movements and forces now were concentrated. The Convention was dissolved, but Sinn Féin had become the governing factor in Irish affairs.
In 1918, when German power was thrusting back the Allied line and English defeat seemed likely, the haters of Ireland tried to vent their wrath upon a nation that was not as formidable as Germany. Conscription was enacted and plans were laid to carry off our manhood. Here was the first great demand on de Valera as the leader of the nation. He it was, more than any other man, who saved our country from a holocaust. There was a union of parties, to which the hierarchy lent its utterly invaluable moral aid, and the whole nation was pledged to resist the English aggression. We do no injustice to John Dillon, the leader of the Parliamentarians, if we affirm that it was de Valera’s will and skill that made the union of powers what it was: an unbreakable obstacle to our enemies’ design. A “German plot” was trumped up, and de Valera and others were carried off into fresh captivity; but the organised nation now was able to defy the threat against it. Conscription was abandoned.
Hence, when the general election was held at the end of the world war, the Sinn Fein movement, the Volunteers, and Eamon de Valera the leader of both, were acclaimed by the nation that they had saved in its darkest hour. The Republic swept the polls; and in January, 1919, Dáil Eireann was established.
II.—THE REPUBLIC IN BEING—1919-1921
The Republic which had been proclaimed in Easter Week, 1916, by a handful of heroes, now was erected by the nation’s vote. The first Declaration of Independence was proclaimed. A Government was set up to which the people yielded loyalty with pride and joy, and the struggle to make foreign rule in Ireland untenable began.
The policy of the Republican Government was that laid down by Sinn Féin in earlier days, which may be defined most briefly as Non-cooperation and the progressive voluntary development of an Irish State. Very soon, armed action was proved unavoidable. Crown forces harried national figures, national activities. Arms were seized, meetings attacked, Volunteers struck back. War rapidly developed between the Constabulary and the patriot forces; and Dáil Eireann, at the insistence of President de Valera (as he was now) took over responsibility for the acts of the Volunteers as the army of the Irish Republic. The Black-and-Tans were brought to Irel