In June 1914 a young man with a pistol killed the blameless Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his equally innocuous spouse, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenburg.
On July 26 1914 the King’s Own Scottish Borderers discharged their rifles at unarmed civilians in Dublin, killing three and wounding thirty two.
Nine days later the Regiment, together with the Crown Forces of Britain and her Empire were in alliance with the young gunman against the peace of the world. The officer who gave the order to fire had expressed his hatred of the Irish a few days before proving it. Neither he nor his subordinates were punished.
Neither Germany nor Austria nor Turkey had territorial claims on Britain, nor France, and their Empires, nor the Tsarist Empire. The French hungered for revenge and Alsace – Lorraine, lost when they picked a war with Prussia, and lost, in 1870. The Tsar coveted Constantinople, which was held out as a bribe by the British, who themselves had resolved to crush Germany, a growing industrial and trading rival with more advanced social legislation than theirs.
T.E. Lawrence, posing as an academic, spent years in the Middle East and, and a British Naval Officer, Maurice Hankey on a “courtesy” visit to Constantinople with his ship, dropped off at Gallipoli, to spy out the land, years ahead of the battle there. Hankey was Cabinet Secretary during the Great War and later wrote up or altered the records of its conduct. For ten years from 1904 on, the Committee of Imperial Defence plotted the destruction of Europe and the expansion of the British Empire.
Between the ambush in Kilmichael on 28 November and the burning of Cork on 11th December 1920 THE TIMES OF LONDON published reports from New York and from Austria which depict the Hell on Earth created by Britain and her cronies during the previous 6 years.
The Americans were about to restrict immigration. It was said that if a ship could carry three million passengers every Jew in Poland, newly liberated from Russian and Austrian rule would immediately make for the States. It was believed in the States that those Jews who had recently arrived were incapable of making a living there. It said that eight million Germans, freed from the yoke of the Kaiser would be racing them across the Atlantic to the land of the free.
The numbers fleeing Continental Europe to the US were a reasonable cause for concern there. But much of the fear could be put down to xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and the dread of the infection of Bolshevism. On 10th December 1920 THE TIMES reported on the ruination of Austria, and in unusually decent manner called for international aid for her citizens whom they praised for their abilities and civilised values.
On 11th December 1920 THE TIMES carried a report “MARTIAL LAW IN IN PLACE OF REPRISALS” which praised Lloyd George’s conduct in the Commons the day before –
“The Prime Minister bestrode the House today………..his Parliamentary mastery has never shown to greater advantage………his Irish policy has two faces……..One looks smilingly to a peace of negotiation. The other frowns on crime and insists there can be no real peace until it is under lock and key. He fears that that there is no chance of the real mind of Ireland expressing itself until the murder gang has been broken up. ……….His idea of peace by consent is that the Sinn Fein MPs, already legally elected, should meet and draft with us the terms of peace. He spoke of bringing the criminals to justice, or at any rate,
to surrender’ ……
That was one face of his policy. The other is relentless prosecution of the war on the murder gangs as a condition of the free expression by Ireland of her real
opinion…………. He stated a new policy of martial law…..it would seem more humane than the present reprisals………….It is proposed ..to issue a proclamation
calling all….to surrender their arms either to the military, or (a stroke of genius) to the parish priest….This strikes one not as an increased measure of coercion,
but as a decided amelioration of the present system of reprisals.”
The foolowing day 12 Decembrer 1920 tTHE TIMES reported THE CITY OF CORK iIN FLAMES – in a supposed Reprisal the center of Cork city wa set on fire
and looted by Crown Forces, and civilians murdered by them. The City Hall, centre of democratic local government, like most local authorities in Ireland,following
elections in January and June 1920 was firmly commmited to the Republic – a clear manifestation of “the real mind of Ireland.”
The burning of the City Hall revealed the real mind of British officialdom to democracy, and the burning of the Carnegie Library to its concern for culture and learning.
The industrial scale of the looting revealed the motivation of the “police cadets.” The British Army provided explosives and expertise in their use in the mass destruction
in the city.
All the pieces quoted from THE TIMES were reprinted in recent weeks. Some enterprising scholar might make an collection of the pieces referring to Ireland
reprinted in this decade of remembrance and put them online. They are mines of both information and misinformation.
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