The Catholic Bulletin published this account of the Irish struggle for independence and sovereignty in 1938. It was written by Sean Toibin, writing under the pen name Fear Faire – a regular columnist for the Bulletin. It was put into print as De Valera completed the national struggle (except for the Six County area which Britain had detached from the Irish body politic in 1920 and fashioned into ‘Northern Ireland’) by securing the Treaty ports off Britain and an end to the economic war being waged on the country from London.
It is well worth a read to remind ourselves what a tremendous achievement had been made by the Irish people.
THE HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE RECALLED
I—EASTER WEEK AND AFTER
The centre of Dublin was a red and smoking ruin when the men who had held out against Imperial forces for one heroic week—the Easter Week which will be remembered forever in Irish history—were marched to their cells and to the Castle yard, some to be tried by Maxwell’s drum-head officers and shot, some to be sentenced to imprisonment, some to be interned. The last of the city Commandants to surrender had been Eamon de Valera. Tall, slender, young, silent, self-possessed, he had held Boland’s Mills, a powerful outpost, displaying remarkable gifts of military generalship, and now, silent still, he marched his men through stricken Dublin. If there were despondent hearts, his was not among them. He had been slow to accept the order to surrender; but, when he was satisfied that all that could be done with the gun was done, and now the hour for sacrifice and trust in the fruit of sacrifice, had come, he turned that firm, cool will of his to this grim sequel of the Rising.
He alone of the leaders escaped death, Commandant Thomas Ashe having succumbed to the forcible feeding inflicted on him in Mountjoy Gaol. We are not detracting from the glory and the splendour of the sacrifice of the valiant men who died when we say that the sparing of Eamon de Valera saved unique qualities for Ireland’s service. Pearse, that prophetic genius, did what no other man could do when he taught the nation with his wondrous words, and emptied his noble life out in order to inspire the effort that followed. De Valera did what Pearse could not have done when, with his astonishing gifts of constructive statesmanship, his persistence and his power over men, he carried on what Pearse and the other patriots before the Rising—Rooney, Bulfin, Griffith—had begun. He escaped because he was almost unknown. Had our enemies guessed what this young man, with a Spanish name had in him to do, he, too, would have been set with his back to a prison wall and shot down at dawn like Padraic Pearse, and his gentle brother, like gallant MacDonagh, the laughing Sean MacDermott, Connolly, the aged Tom Clarke and his youthful brother-in-law, Ned Daly, Michael O’Hanrahan, brave Major MacBride, the gallant Mallin, the resolute Kent, with the heroically glorious Joseph Mary Plunkett, Colbert and Heuston, who can doubt that God’s own providence saved this remarkable man for Ireland? Even people who were in touch with the national movement knew little more of the teacher of mathematics than that his name appeared in the Irish Volunteer in reports of military exercises (in which he was always prompt and silently efficient), and that he was the husband of a gracious lady and ardent Gaelic patriot, Sinéad Ni Fhlannagáin.
It was in prison that Eamon de Valera became leader of the Irish nation. When the soldiers of Ireland had been led through English streets, howled at and reviled, when they suffered all that prison can do to break the spirit of the brave, the alert, indomitable figure gave leadership. Eoin MacNeill appeared in the jail one day. How would the other prisoners receive the man who had broken the unity of the revolt? Eamon de Valera gave the answer. MacNeill was England’s prisoner; Irishmen must honour him. An order was rapped out. MacNeill was saluted. For this breach of prison discipline, De Valera was punished; but in one flashing sentence he had healed the nation’s division and h