July 15
De Valera
“Saw de Valera at his hotel in the afternoon. A whole bevy of people in the sitting-room, through which Childers showed me to the bedroom, where the great man afterwards appeared. After greetings I remarked that I fancied he had a little quarrel with me for something in the Manchester Guardian (I had heard this from Denoir, a good Irishman on our London staff whose suggestion it was that de Valera would be glad to meet me) and he replied with alacrity that he had and at once launched forth……..It appeared that his grievance was that we had denounced some of the Sinn Fein outrages as murders on a par with some of the murders committed by the agents of the (usurping, British) Government. He regarded this as outrageous and spoke of the Irish Republican Army as the cream of the population, as chivalrous and honourable a force as existed in any part of the world.
I said we discriminated between acts which were really acts of war done in the open and assassinations of individuals like the Dublin murders which we did certainly did utterly condemn. The murders were he said executions carried out for a purpose against spies and the suborners of spies or persons convicted on evidence of similar offences. He then defended the dreadful Dublin murders on the ground that the men murdered one by one in their beds were officers of the (usurping, British) Government secret service, and Childers, who was present throughout the conversation of about half an hour, concurred with him. He said these men were members of the (British) Government headquarters staff and were engaged in spying in order to destroy the Sinn Fein headquarters staff and they had a right to kill them.
Throughout de Valera based himself on the absolute right of the Irish people to “self-determination”.
Their elected representatives were the sole lawful Government of Ireland and those who opposed them were intruders and usurpers to be resisted in every possible way.
At one point in the conversation he denounced Lloyd George’s Carnarvon speech as the most wicked ever delivered by a statesman.
I said we also denounced it and that I felt so strongly on Lloyd George’s practical condonation of outrage by the (British) Government’s own servants I had since been almost completely estranged from him. But he (de Valera) took quite another view. What he objected to was the strong assertion
in the speech of the right to coerce Ireland, not the means taken for doing it. ‘I don’t think much about that’ he said. The crime was the crime of violating Irish rights, not condoning breaches of the law by the instruments of the law. What he disputed was the validity of the law itself.
They (the Irish) had no desire to use force, and only used it because constitutional methods had been found to be useless. They had refused the offer in its original form because it appeared to imply some right on the part of Great Britain to determine the nature of the settlement”
October 28/29
Collins
Telephoned at once to Desmond Fitzgerald, co-Secretary with Childers to the delegation and he arranged for me to see Collins at 3.30 at Cadogan Gardens. He was still engaged at the conference in Hans Place. There was a series of characteristic muddles, precision not being as yet an Irish virtue, and it was close on six when Collins turned up in immense force at Cadogan Gardens, turned everybody, including an unhappy typist out of the room with a sweep of his arms and settled down to talk for an hour and a quarter. The telephone rang at intervals when he sprang at it fiercely as an enemy and yelled a challenge that might have split the instrument. Then Fitzgerald would appear and he relapsed into a gloomy silence till the interruption was over.
In spite of these mannerisms I found him a straightforward and quite agreeable savage.
December
(Lloyd) ” George complained bitterly of Childers. He could have settled quite easily with Griffith and Collins, but Childers always managed to put a spoke in the wheel……..
In the evening I called by appointment to see Michael Collins in Hans Place. He was late and in haste to pack and take the train to Holyhead. I saw him for a few minutes alone and then joined him at dinner.
Erskine Childers was also dining and leaving with him. I told him my reason for seeing him was in order that I might be able to do whatever was in my power to save the situation and he said he perfectly understood that. At the same time he seemed to be quite cheerfully contemplating failure (not necessarily a bad sign). According to Hammond, Scott’s Manchester Guardian colleague, it is the custom of Sinn Feiners to speak in quite a different strain to Englishmen and to Irishmen or foreign sympathisers,……..
…….I asked how far they could go on the question of allegiance. Childers asked Collins if he might say and Collins nodded assent. It appeared they were not prepared to admit the Crown in Ireland at all. I pointed out that the proposal that Griffith himself had put forward had been that the King should be King of Ireland as well as King of Great Britain. Yes, said Childers, but that was two years before the war in Ireland. Now we will not admit the Crown on any terms. The Crown would really mean the British Ministry……”
Monday 5th December
“Lloyd George asked me to come to see him at 5 minutes to 10 -an unusual and curiously exact hour.
When I arrived he was closeted with Collins, and Davies (Brit official) told me he was due to meet the King at 10.10 before the King went down to Sandringham. As he came out of the Cabinet room, he (Lloyd George) laid hold of me and pulled me in. He was excited and angry, said the Irish had gone back on everything – allegiance, naval securities, in fact all along the line. Agreement on these terms was impossible. Collins had refused to be a party to them, and said one of the others must go with Griffith, in his place, to explain and justify them; he would not. So he had come late on Sunday night by himself after the others had gone and returned this morning…………….
I was to see Lloyd George again later, but the Irishmen stayed on and on and I had my leader to write.
Tea was sent into the conference at 5, at 7 Lloyd George, Austen Chamberlain and Birkenhead, our 3 chief negotiators retired to formulate new terms, the which were handed the Irishmen at 7.30. They were to return at 10 and did return at 11.15. At 2.30 (AM 6th December) the Treaty was signed.
I went to lunch with Lloyd George the next day (6th Dec) ….He told me the decision was in the balance until the very last …….after they had threshed out their differences (I gathered obligatory free trade between Great Britain and Ireland was one of the last points conceded on the British side and that Birkenhead’s form of the oath had been accepted) George said he put it to Griffith whether he could sign it on behalf of all the plenipotentiaries. Griffith said he could not. ‘Then’, said Lloyd George ‘I must put it to you individually’. He put it to Collins, Collins hesitated, and declined. The others declined. ‘There’, said Lloyd George, ‘you see the difference between physical and moral courage’.
It was then that Lloyd George played his last card. Some days before (before the debate in the House the previous Monday, Lloyd George told me) he had seen Griffith alone -‘not here’ said Lloyd George with a twinkle. ‘away from here’ – and had come to a general, informal agreement with him as to terms on which Griffith would be prepared to settle, and it was only when he had made sure of his ground that George had challenged a division in the House. Before they parted George said to Griffith ‘for clearness sake’ this had better be put in writing and that was done. George now at the critical moment produced the document. ‘You signed this’ George said, ‘and knowing you to be the man that you are, you communicated it afterwards to Mr Collins. He therefore is also a party to it. I took the risk of breaking my party. You in Ireland often bring against us in England the charge of breach of faith. Now it is for you to show that Irishmen know to keep faith’. (‘Griffith’ said Lloyd George) seemed a little surprised when the terms were read. So evidently he had not kept a copy. An extraordinary example of skill and foresight in negotiation.The words I have quoted stuck in my mind. I think they are almost exact. All signed,
At parting I congratulated Lloyd George warmly and he responded. ‘To think’ he said ‘that we have succeeded at last in the task we have both worked at for more than thirty years.’ He was jubilant,”
Below these quotations is the comment:-
Llpyd George had achieved a great Liberal objective: He had disposed of Ireland as a problem in British politics.
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