The movements of the flying columns of the I.R.A.—gangs of armed ruffians, usually numbering about forty, but sometimes more, sometimes less, and led by men with military experience (ex-soldiers and even ex-officers, to their everlasting shame)—have always corresponded accurately to the amount of police and military pressure brought to bear on them, which pressure has continually fluctuated in agreement to the whims and brain-waves of the politicians in power.

Figuratively speaking, these same politicians have kept the police and military with one hand tied behind their back, and sometimes when the screams of the mob politicians in the House have been loudest, have very nearly tied up both their hands. If a chart had been kept during the Irish war showing the relative intensity of the politicians’ screams and the activities of the I.R.A., the reading of it would be highly interesting and instructive.

Extra pressure, more rigid enforcement of existing restrictions on movement, and increased 263military activity have always resulted in a general stampede of flying columns to the mountains of the west, where the gunmen could rest in comparative safety, and swagger about among the simple and ignorant mountain-folk to their hearts’ content.

Here they would stay until the politicians, frightened by inspired questions in the House, would practically confine the military and police to barracks. The gunmen would then, with great reluctance, leave the safety of the mountains, and return to the southern front, to carry on once more the good work of political murder.

And so the game of seesaw went on. Every time that the Crown forces saw victory in sight the politicians would drag them back again to start all afresh. The wonder is that the Crown forces stuck it so long with every hand against them, and their worst abuse coming from a cowardly section of their own countrymen in England.

Early in 1921 the Crown forces in the south of Ireland suddenly gave forth signs that a determined effort was to be made to deal effectively, once and for all, with the gangs of armed murderers and robbers roaming the country, masquerading as soldiers of the Irish Republic; and again the flying columns fled in haste to their mountain retreats in the west, a part of the country where the majority of the inhabitants have always done their best to keep out of the trouble, with a few isolated exceptions.

264This time they stayed longer; in fact, each time it became harder to induce the gunmen to forsake the peace of the mountains for the war in the south. After a time they started to vary the monotony by carrying out punitive expeditions against the police and the unfortunate Loyalists in the surrounding lowlands, but always to fly back to the mountains at the first sight of a force of police or soldiers.

Ex-soldiers were the chief game at this period. A district would be chosen where there were no troops and few police. A list of all ex-soldiers living in this district would be made out, and guides provided by the local I.R.A. commandant. Each ex-soldier would be visited in turn during a night, given his choice of active service with the I.R.A. or a sudden death. Those who remained loyal to the King would be led out and butchered like sheep, though possibly the murderers would not take the trouble to remove their victims, but would fire a volley into them as they lay in bed, and leave them there. Truly a brave army!

Transport presented no difficulty to the gunmen. The British Government took practically no steps to control the movements of motors, motor bicycles, or push-bicycles, except the motor-permit farce, which greatly inconvenienced Loyalists only. All they had to do was to commandeer as many cars or bicycles as they wanted, where, when, and how they liked.

However, this was not all the work which the Sinn Fein leaders intended their flying 265columns to carry out, and in order to induce the gunmen to return to duty the usual noisy peace squeal was started in England, so that conditions might be made pleasanter for the gunmen in the south. The murdering of ex-soldiers and helpless Loyalists could be easily carried out by local Volunteers under a well-seasoned murderer—an excellent method of initiating raw recruits into the methods of the Sinn Fein idea of warfare. The British Government, always great judges of Irish character, thought that the Sinn Fein leaders were coming to their senses at last, took off the pressure, and the gunmen duly returned to duty.

At length there came a time when these columns really got the wind up, stampeded to the western mountains, and this time refused point-blank to return to duty.

In the late spring of 1921 Blake was suddenly called over to England on private business in London, and afterwards went down to the country to spend a few days with the parents of a man with whom he had served in France.

The day after his arrival Blake’s host told him that a Black and Tan, a native of the place, had been murdered in Ireland a few days previously, and was to be buried that day in the parish graveyard, and asked Blake if he would accompany him to the funeral.

When passing through Dublin on his way to England, Blake had seen in the Castle the account of how this unfortunate Black and Tan had met his death—shot in the back when 266walking in the streets of a small western town with a girl; and not content with that, the murderers had fired a volley at him as he lay wounded on the ground, and even fired several shots after the girl as she fled shrieking up the street. So terrified were the townspeople that, though there were many in the streets at the time, not one dared to even approach the dying constable, and it was not until a full hour afterwards that a passing police patrol found him lying dead in a great pool of blood. Incidentally, the murderers had by then put sixteen miles behind them by means of stolen bicycles.

Blake accepted, expecting to see a large funeral to do honour to the murdered policeman, but to his great surprise and indignation found that only the near relations of the murdered man were present.

Returning from the funeral, Blake happened to see the local police inspector in the main street of the little town, and at once tackled him about the funeral, wanting to know why the local police had not been present as a last mark of respect to a man who had died for his country.

The inspector seemed greatly surprised and rather taken aback, and replied that he could hardly be expected to turn his men out to attend the funeral of a murderer.

For a moment Blake saw red, and but for a natural horror of making a scene in a public place, would probably have knocked the inspector down. Then, thinking that there must 267be a bad blunder somewhere, he asked whom the Black and Tan had murdered, and how he had met his death. The inspector admitted that the Black and Tan had been murdered, he believed, and then opened out on the crimes and atrocities which the Black and Tans had committed in Ireland—murder, rape, and highway robbery,—in fact, the usual list of atrocities which is generally to be read in the Sinn Fein propaganda pamphlets.

Blake waited patiently until the inspector had given him a harrowing picture of the condition of the south and west of Ireland: heartrending accounts of homeless and starving women and children, old and young men and boys hunted like wild beasts in the mountains and living on berries and roots; shops burnt to the ground and looted by Black and Tans in mufti; and of men and boys shot by Auxiliaries in the dead of night before the eyes of their relations.

He then asked the inspector who had given him this information, adding that he would like to see the proof of it, and at the same time telling him that he was a D.I. in the R.I.C.

The inspector invited Blake to go to the police station with him, and here, as Blake had expected, he was shown the usual lying propaganda and pamphlets of Sinn Fein, which have been distributed by the million throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and the U.S.A. An extract from one pamphlet is worth repeating:—

“Famine is about to add thousands of innocent 268victims to the hundreds of thousands already in need of the bare necessities that keep body and soul together. In every Irish village and town sickness, pestilence, and death invade the humble homes, striking swiftly and surely the mothers and children incapable of resistance through months of struggle against cold and hunger.... Children of tender years, ragged and wretched, trudge daily through the cold to a school now used for a relief station to obtain the one meal a day on which they live—a piece of bread and a warm drink.”

Seeing from his ribbons that the man had served in the war, Blake asked him if he would take the word of a brother officer against that of a Sinn Fein rebel. The inspector seemed to think this a good joke, and replied: “A brother officer every time.” “Well, then,” said Blake, “as an ex-British officer, I give you my word of honour that all those pamphlets you have just shown me are a pack of lies circulated by Irish rebels to ruin your country.”

Still the inspector was only half convinced, and in spite of all Blake could say he saw when he at last left that the man’s belief in the printed pamphlets of Sinn Fein was still unshaken. Such is the tremendous effect of print, whether newspapers or pamphlets, on the modern mind, and the firm belief in the old saying that there can be no smoke without a fire.

That afternoon Blake was carried off by his hostess to a drawing-room lecture at a big country-house. His hostess was not quite sure 269what the lecture was about, but believed it had something to do with Russia. After tea the lecturer arose, and before he uttered a word, Blake had a premonition of what was coming. A tall thin man, with pronounced Celtic peculiarities and a mane of long, lank, black hair, Blake had seen his prototype thousands of times in the west of Ireland.

Throwing back his great mane with a jerk of his head, the lecturer started on an impassioned recital of the atrocities committed in Ireland by the British Army of Occupation, practically the same collection of lies and wicked quarter truths which Blake had heard from the police inspector that morning.

Blake watched the faces of the audience closely, mostly women of the upper and middle classes, and could see that the lecturer’s ready tongue was making a deep impression on them. There was no yawning or fidgeting, and the audience, many of them with the parted lips of rapt attention, kept their eyes riveted on the quite interesting face of the wild man of the west, camouflaged by a London tailor to harmonise with an English drawing-room.

Blake let the man have a fair innings, and then while he was drinking a glass of water (Blake felt like asking him if he would not prefer poteen) stood up and said quietly, “Ladies and gentlemen, so far this lecture has been nothing but a pack of lies from beginning to end. The lecturer is a Sinn Fein rebel camouflaged as an Irish gentleman, and I am a D.I. of the Royal Irish Constabulary. During 270the war I fought for your country, and the lecturer probably assisted the Boches in every underhand and mean way he could. You can judge for yourselves which of us is most probably telling the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

The wild man turned with a wicked snarl, all signs of the veneer gone, and his face reminded Blake of a cornered gunman he had had to deal with once during a raid on a Dublin lodging-house; and there would probably have been an ugly and unseemly scene, but the owner of the house intervened, and gently but firmly led the wild man out of the room, while Blake and his friends left the house at once.

On his return Blake found a cipher wire from his County Inspector recalling him at once, and going by car to London managed to catch the Irish mail from Euston. All the sleepers were engaged, but by good luck he found himself in possession of a first-class compartment.

While idly smoking a cigarette and meditating on the extraordinary amount of Sinn Fein propaganda he had met with in the course of one short day in England, he noticed a well-dressed slight girl pass and repass the glass door of his compartment several times. As the mail pulled out of the station this girl pulled open the sliding-door from the corridor and sat down opposite Blake, remarking that it was a grand evening, and thereby unconsciously informing him that she was Irish.

271Suddenly realising that he was smoking, he asked the girl, who he could see was unusually pretty and quite young, if she had any objection, and, as he had expected, she readily entered into conversation.

After a time she remarked, with a pretty engaging smile, that she saw he had nothing to read, and getting down her suit-case, handed Blake a handful of the identical pamphlets he had already seen that morning in the English country police station. In addition, there was one fresh one on “The Irish Issue,” by William J. M. A. Maloney, M.D., captain in the British Army, August 1914-August 1916.

Blake then saw that his original suspicion was correct, and that he had to deal with that most dangerous of all spies, Sinn Fein or any other breed—a pretty girl.

By the time Rugby was passed he had heard the simple life-history in a rural part of England of the girl, ending with the information that she was going to Dublin for three months, and that she was very much in dread after all the ............