I Signed My Death Warrant by Ryle T. Dwyer Read Free Book Online

gathering cheered. ‘I do not want, therefore, to begin a bad example by starting speech-making. If we act in the future as we have acted in the last couple of years, we will never have to talk about freedom, for we will have it.’
    â€˜There is, I fear, little chance of his counter-proposals being satisfactory,’ Lloyd George wrote to King George V, ‘but I am absolutely confident that we shall have public opinion overwhelmingly upon our side throughout the Empire and even in the United States when our proposals are published.’
    The British proposals were a significant advance on anything previously offered to Ireland, so de Valera had to thread carefully. Unless the Irish people were given some alternative other than ‘continuing the war for maintenance of the Republic,’ he later admitted, ‘I felt certain that the majority of the people would be weaned from us.’ Hence he had to come up with an alternative for which the Irish people would be prepared to fight.

2 - ‘Free to consider every method’
    The Dáil cabinet gathered in a front room of the Mansion House. De Valera sat at the head of a table facing Dawson Street, while Cathal Brugha was at the foot of the table. Arthur Griffith was on the president’s left with Joe McDonagh beside him, while Austin Stack, Robert Barton and Erskine Childers sat on a lounge chair withdrawn from the table, with Eoin Mac Neill next on a chair partly facing the president. Richard Mulcahy came next, while J. J. O’Kelly (Sceilg) and Countess Markievicz sat behind Brugha on another lounge chair facing de Valera, and Collins, who came in late, sat partially facing the president on a seat alongside Kevin O’Higgins. Then came Ernest Blythe, W. T. Cosgrave and Count Plunkett sitting well back from the table. Diarmuid O’Hegarty, the cabinet secretary, sat between them and de Valera.
    De Valera hoped to persuade all concerned to agree to a settlement in which Britain would acknowledge Ireland’s freedom and the Irish people would then freely accept the same de facto status as the dominions, without formally being a member of the British commonwealth. He had not yet worked this out fully in his own mind when he presented his idea to the cabinet. He had not even thought of a name for the plan.
    It was a thorny meeting at which ‘elements of friction were already manifest’, according to J. J. O’Kelly, the minister for education. Things were not helped by de Valera’s poor chairmanship. His cabinet meetings lacked discipline. Instead of considering one thing at a time, he tended to deal with everything together in the hope of reaching a general consensus. This would have been extremely difficult at the best of times, but it was almost impossible in a cabinet of eleven headstrong ministers, who were often joined by obstinate understudies. As a result the discussions tended to ramble and they were often quite inconclusive. Ministers frequently came away with conflicting opinions about the outcome of discussions.
    Griffith and W. T. Cosgrave said the British offer was better than they had expected and MacNeill welcomed it. ‘You all know my opinion,’ said Collins, who nevertheless described the British proposals as ‘a step forward’, but Stack was very critical. Childers was also hostile. O’Kelly suggested that relevant docu­ments should be circulated so that everyone could give the issues more consideration, and Constance Markievicz, the minister for labour, agreed with him.
    Brugha sat silently until de Valera asked him for his views after everyone else had spoken. A normally quiet, reserved man, he nevertheless had definite views and did not be­lieve in mincing words. Resolute and utterly fearless, he was prone to obstinacy. When he spoke everybody knew exactly where he stood.
    â€˜I haven’t much to add,’ Brugha now said, looking straight at de Valera, ‘except to