1916 - The Long Revolution E-Book

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2007

Seitenzahl: 987

Beschreibung

Introduction by Garret Fitzgerald. This book seeks to interpret the events of Easter Week 1916 as the central defining event of a 'long revolution' in Irish history. The origins of the long revolution lie in the second half of the nineteenth century, and its legacy is still being played out in the first years of the twenty-first century. Acknowledged experts on specific topics seek to explore the layered domestic and international, political, legal and moral aspects of this uniquely influential and controversial event. Contributors are: Rory O' Dwyer, Michael Wheatley, Brendan O'Shea and Gerry White, D.G. Boyce, Francis M. Carroll, Rosemary Cullen Owens, Jérôme aan de Wiel, Adrian Hardiman, Keith Jeffery, Mary McAleese, Owen McGee, Seamus Murphy and Brian P. Murphy.

Leseprobe

To Gillian

MERCIER PRESS 3B Oak House, Bessboro Rd Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.

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© Gabriel Doherty and Dermot Keogh, 2007

Epub ISBN: 978 1 85635 721 0

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 85635 758 6

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors wish to thank the following individuals for their unstinting assistance in the preparations for the original conference, and during the preparation of this volume:

First, and foremost, the speakers at the original conference and other contributors to this volume: President Mary McAleese, Dr Garret FitzGerald, Professor Keith Jeffery, Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel, Mr. Gerry White, Dr Brendan O’Shea, Rosemary Cullen Owens, the Hon. Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman, Dr Owen McGee, Dr Brian P. Murphy, Professor D.G. Boyce, Professor Francis Carroll, Dr Séamus Murphy, Rory O’Dwyer and Dr Michael Wheatley. Thanks are also due to Dr Margaret MacCurtain who acted as a sessional chair at the conference.

From University College Cork: President Gerry Wrixon and Vice President Michael O’Sullivan; Catherine Fairtlough (President’s office); Brian Dunnion, Dara O’Shea and Marie McSweeney (Marketing office); Tony Perrott (Audio-Visual services); Martin Hayes (Computer centre); Sheila Maguire and the General service operatives (General services); Alanah Carey Bates and staff (Glucksman gallery); Geraldine O’Sullivan and staff (Campbells catering); Professor David Cox, Marian Dineen (College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences); Professor Matthew MacNamara (Department of French).

From the library, University College Cork: the Librarian, John Fitz-Gerald, and his staff, particularly those members who have worked in the ‘Special Collections’ section over the years, notably Helen Davis, Peadar Cranitch, Anne Cronin, Teresina Flynn, Catherine Horgan, Cronán Ó Doibhlín, and Mary Lombard.

From the Department of History, University College Cork: the secretaries, Charlotte Holland, Deirdre O’Sullivan, Geraldine McAllister, Norma Buckley, Veronica Fraser, Margaret Clayton, and Sheila Cunneen; postgraduate assistants, John Dennehy, Nicholas Harrington, Sarah Fahy, Tim O’Regan, John O’Donovan, David Coleman; staff members, Dr Andrew McCarthy, Dr Mike Cosgrave, Dr Larry Geary, Dr Donal Ó Drisceoil, Dr Diarmuid Scully, Dr Damian Bracken, and Professor Donnchadh Ó Corráin.

From the archives of the Irish College in Rome: the Rector, Monsignor Liam Bergin; the Vice Rector, Fr Albert McDonnell; the archivist, Vera Orschel; secretarial staff, Andy Devane and Alison Mills.

From Military Archives, Cathal Brugha Barracks, Dublin: Commandant Victor Laing.

From the National Archives, Dublin: the Director, David Craig, and all his staff, most notably Catriona Crowe and Tom Quinlan.

From Áras an Uachtaráin: Maura Grant, Emer Grenville, and Pamela McDermott.

From the Department of the Taoiseach: John Kennedy, Cathal Hunter, Jerry Kelleher, and Colette Tuite Gallagher.

From the office of the lord mayor of Cork: Susan O’Flynn; from the office of Dr FitzGerald: Sharon Kelly; from the Courts Service: Jean Coyle; from Oxford University: Dr Kinch Hoekstra; from SIPTU: Manus O’Riordan.

From Mercier press: Brian Ronan, Clodagh Feehan, and – as always – Mary Feehan, for her outstanding professionalism.

We also wish to record our thanks to our families for their constant support – from the Keogh household, Anne, Aoife, Clare, Eoin and Niall; and from the Doherty household, Gillian and Méabh.

The conference was organised with financial assistance from the Conference Fund of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, University College Cork.

This volume has been produced with financial assistance from the Commemorations Initiatives Fund of the Department of the Taoiseach.

NOTE ON SPELLING

Given the important role played by the cultural nationalist movement in Ireland during the period covered by this volume, there are a number of individuals and institutions mentioned in it whose names have both Irish and English forms. In order to avoid confusion an attempt has been made in the text both to standardise spelling where more than one variation exists, and to utilise the most commonly used form in preference to any alternatives. To take but a few examples involving significant individuals, Pádraig Pearse was alternatively known as P.H. Pearse, Patrick Pearse, Pádraic Pearse, and Pádraig MacPiarais; Seán MacDermott was often referred to as Seán MacDiarmada; Éamonn Ceannt as Edward, or Ned, Kent; and Thomas MacDonagh as Tomás MacDonagh. Where possible, one form (sometimes Irish, sometimes English, sometimes a mixture of both, depending on usage) has been used – save, of course, in citations, where the original form has invariably been provided.

ABBREVIATIONS

AOH

Ancient Order of Hibernians

BBC

British Broadcasting Corporation

CC

Catholic Curate

CIÉ

Córas Iompair Éireann

CMA

Competent Military Authority

DAA

Drapers Assistants Association

DBC

Dublin Bakery Company

DMP

Dublin Metropolitan Police

DORA

Defence of the Realm Act

DORR

Defence of the Realm Regulations

FOIF

Friends of Irish Freedom

GAA

Gaelic Athletic Association

GPO

General Post Office

ILPTUC

Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress

INTO

Irish National Teachers’ Organisation

IPP

Irish Parliamentary Party

IRA

Irish Republican Army

IRB

Irish Republican Brotherhood

ITGWU

Irish Transport and General Workers Union

ITUC

Irish Trades Union Congress

IWCA

Irish Women’s Citizen’s Association

IWFL

Irish Women’s Franchise League

IWRL

Irish Women’s Reform League

IWSF

Irish Women’s Suffrage Federation

IWSLGA

Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association

IWWU

Irish Women Workers Union

JCWSSW

Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers

KC

King’s Counsel

MGR

Midland Great Railway

MP

Member of Parliament

MRIA

Member of the Royal Irish Academy

MWFL

Munster Women’s Franchise League

NCR

North Circular Road

NUWGA

National University Women Graduates Association

PP

Parish Priest

RDS

Royal Dublin Society

RIC

Royal Irish Constabulary

RTÉ

Radio Teilifís Éireann

SIPTU

Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union

SMA

Special Military Area

TCD

Trinity College Dublin

UCD

University College Dublin

UIL

United Irish League

USA

United States of America

UVF

Ulster Volunteer Force

UWUC

Ulster Women’s Unionist Council

WSPU

Women’s Social and Political Union

YMCA

Young Men’s Christian Association

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

D.G. Boyce is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics and Inter national Relations, University of Wales Swansea.

Francis Carroll is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Manitoba

Rosemary Cullen Owens lectures in Irish history in the Women’s Education, Research and Resource Centre, School of Social Justice, University College Dublin.

Gabriel Doherty lectures in the Department of History, University College Cork.

Garret FitzGerald is Chancellor of the National University of Ireland.

Adrian Hardiman, MRIA, a history graduate of UCD, is a judge of the Supreme Court.

Keith Jeffery is Professor of British History at Queen’s University Belfast.

Dermot Keogh is Professor of History, and head of the Department of History, University College Cork.

Mary McAleese is President of Ireland.

Owen McGee is the author ofThe IRB: the Irish Republican Brotherhood, from the Land League to Sinn Féin, Four Courts, Dublin, 2005, and is currently working on a biography of Arthur Grif fith.

Brian P. Murphy OSB is a member of the Benedictine community at Glenstal abbey, Co. Limerick.

Séamus Murphy lectures in philosophy at the Milltown Institute, Dublin. He is a Jesuit.

Rory O’Dwyer lectures in the Department of History, University College Cork.

Brendan O’Shea is an author and historian whose specialised areas of interest include Irish history, the Balkans and the Middle East.

Michael Wheatley is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast.

Gerry White is an author and historian whose specialised areas of interest include the military history of Co. Cork, the War of Independence and the Civil War.

Jérôme aan de Wiel is Visiting Professor in the Department of History, University College Cork.

PREFACE

_______________________

Garret FitzGerald

During the ninety years since the 1916 Rising so much has been written about that seminal event that a potential reader might be tempted to react sceptically to yet a further work on the subject. ‘Is there any more to be said at this stage about the Rising?’ he or she might be tempted to exclaim.

This book of historical essays triumphantly rebuts any such presumption – and indeed leaves enough issues for further research, analysis and debate to show that in history there is never a last word.

In the brief space permitted to me here I cannot attempt to review all of these essays, many of which deal with issues that, so far as I am aware, have not previously been addressed.

Amongst these is Adrian Hardiman’s cogent exposé of the illegality of the post-Rising court martials which were established, he points out, under the Defence of the Realm Act, and thus were subject to law – rather than operating under martial law, which he quotes the Duke of Wellington as having said ‘was neither more nor less than the will of the general who commands the army … [which] means no law at all.’

Another such piece is that by Séamus Murphy on ‘Easter ethics’, which seeks to apply just war theory to the Rising. It is difficult to refute his basic thesis that the Rising failed to meet several key criteria of just war theory. But he goes on to give six grounds for believing that the Rising was ethically wrong, and several of these depend upon an assertion that the War of Independence that followed from the Rising was ‘extraordinarily unnecessary, given that what the Treaty achieved was not that different from what the home rule legislation had achieved’. This is a remarkable statement upon which to base an argument about what he sees as the futility of the Irish struggle for independence. For home rule as enacted left Britain in control of peace and war for Ireland, with the British army remaining on Irish territory, and the levying of customs duties retained in British hands. Moreover, any Irish home rule government would have had very limited taxation powers, which would have precluded Ireland from setting its own corporate tax rate, as Northern Ireland is still precluded from doing, to the visible distress today of its business and political leaders.

Given the strategic importance of Ireland for Britain until the end of the Cold War, there is no reason to believe that Britain would have allowed a home rule Ireland to move peacefully to independence much before the end of the twentieth century – whereas the independent state won by the War of Independence, with its own Irish army replacing British forces on its territory, had secured unfettered sovereignty by 1931, and was free thereafter to evolve at its own pace, and without British opposition, into a republic outside the Commonwealth. Independence, moreover, gave the Irish state the power to develop its economy, in part at Britain’s expense, by devising a competitive corporate tax system which played a key role in generating economic growth, eventually at three times Britain’s own growth rate.

Séamus Murphy can legitimately argue a case against the morality of 1916 in ‘just war’ terms, and he can make a case that the price paid for independence, in terms of a seventy year legacy of sporadic violence, was a high one – but he weakens these arguments by attempting to minimise the huge difference between the independence secured in 1921 and what home rule would have offered.1

Owen McGee attempts to sort out the roles played in the organisation of the Rising on the one hand by key members of what became known as the ‘Military Committee’ – initially Pearse, Plunkett and Ceannt, later joined by Seán MacDermott, and later still by Connolly – and on the other by the IRB leaders Clarke and, once again, MacDermott. The evidence supports his thesis that a key role in preparing the Rising was in fact played by MacDermott, and that Pearse’s emergence as the hero of the affair was largely fortuitous, reflecting his oratorical and PR skills – skills which, it appears, led Clarke to invite him first to speak at the O’Donovan Rossa funeral and then to read the Proclamation outside the GPO.

Both of these points would have been given even more weight had Dr McGee cited Denis McCullough’s account of the circumstances in which he became president of the IRB; a significant event, no reference to which, curiously, is included in his contribution to this book.2This appointment appears to have been motivated by a desire by Clarke and MacDermott, respectively treasurer and secretary of that secret organisation, to have the IRB presidential role exercised a good physical distance away from Dublin, where they were preparing the Rising. In this connection it is important to understand that, together with the president, these two constituted the executive of the IRB – and that under its constitution the decision of any two of these three officials was binding on its members!

When in late 1915 McCullough told MacDermott that he intended to propose Pádraig Pearse as president of the IRB, to replace John Mul-holland who had resigned, MacDermott dismissed the idea, saying: ‘For the love of God, don’t be stupid, don’t be foolish!’ ‘Why? Isn’t he an excellent man?’ asked McCullough. ‘We never could control that bloody fellow,’ MacDermott replied – adding, in relation to the presidency of their organisation, that he and Clarke would ‘get all that fixed’. Later he told McCullough that they had chosen him for the job, which he accepted under protest.

The fact that ultimately MacDermott rather than Clarke was responsible for the decision to ignore MacNeill’s countermanding order also emerges from McCullough’s account. For, having been given reason to believe that the Rising was imminent despite his not having been given the agreed fortnight’s warning, McCullough hurried to Dublin, and finally tracked down a deliberately elusive MacDermott at Clarke’s house two days later, on Easter Sunday night. On arrival there he asked Clarke what was going to happen. ‘I declare to God,’ Clarke replied, ‘I know nothing more than you do. All I know is that I have orders to report to Daly on Sunday morning and have my arms and equipment ready.’

Owen McGee also brings out the very contingent nature of the declaration of a republic in the GPO – a declaration that later played such a key role in the Treaty ‘split’ and subsequent civil war. He explains that when ‘Clarke announced in the GPO that a republic was going to be proclaimed, [he thought it necessary in order to impress world opinion] many Irish Volunteers were apparently surprised, presumably because, as members of the Irish-Ireland generation, most had never expressed any interest in republicanism, an ideology generally associated with the supposedly “priest-eating” republic of France’ – which, apart from the anomalous case of Switzerland, was, of course, the only non-monarchy in Europe at that time.

The unfamiliarity, and indeed improbability, of the idea of a republic to most people at that time was reflected a day or two later in the easy assumption by Pearse and Plunkett – when discussing with my father, Desmond FitzGerald, the possible future of Ireland if Germany won the war – that our new state too would be a monarchy, perhaps under such a figure as the Kaiser’s sixth son, Joachim, whom they believed to be unmarried, and thus available to marry a Catholic and bring his children up as Irish-speaking Catholics.3(Understandably, perhaps, they were unaware that Joachim had in fact married a Protestant princess just six weeks earlier).

In his paper onThe Catholic church, the Holy See and the 1916 Rising’ Dermot Keogh, despite some reservations about Owen McGee’s account in his recent book as to who was and was not an IRB member, believes that ‘Dr McGee’s general thesis has validity’.4In that contribution to this book Professor Keogh has deployed to good effect his familiarity with the historical relationship between the Holy See and Ireland, and with the role played by members of the Irish hierarchy, especially in the aftermath of the Rising, giving what must be the definitive account of these matters.

Another important paper challenges conventional wisdom on an important issue. Rory O’Dwyer, in his ‘The golden jubilee of the 1916 Easter Rising’, rejects the view promoted by Conor Cruise O’Brienin 1981that the 1966 commemorations witnessed an ‘explosion of nationalist sentiment’ that produced ‘the greatest orgy ever of the cult of the Rising’.5O’Dwyer notes that this opinion was echoed in 1994 in less dramatic terms by Dermot Keogh: ‘What the celebrations did was to sensitise the Irish public and allow for greater uncritical receptivity to the message of physical force nationalism.’6

O’Dwyer concludes his comprehensive, and I think convincing, review of the events of that golden jubilee year with these words:

The scale of the commemoration in 1966 is unlikely ever to be equalled, nor the level and quality of historical scholarship produced at the time to be exceeded. The high level of nationalist feeling in the period was generally harnessed in a very positive fashion, whereas republican militant sentiment was effectively curtailed. With much state ceremony the ‘ghost’ of 1916 was laid to rest in a dignified and respectful tribute. It was now time to move on.

Conor Cruise O’Brien, then at the peak of his radical period, used that occasion to accuse all Irish governments of betraying what he described as the revolutionary tradition of Tone, Pearse and Connolly, and he concluded correctly, and with apparent regret, that ‘Connolly’s Republic is as far off as ever’.7

For my part, at that time I was certainly very alive to the negative consequences of 1916. I wrote in the quarterly Studies about the subsequent death by violence of so many people: policemen, jurymen doing their duty, landlords, and a cabinet minister, Kevin O’Higgins, as well as many members of the IRA – not to speak of the demoralisation that followed these political divisions of the Civil War, the perpetuation of out-worn hatreds, as well as the inferiority complex, the destructive xenophobia and the inverted snobbery that had derived from the period of British rule – all of which under different and less violent circumstances might have gradually faded away in the decades after independence.

Consequently, I felt in 1966 that it was not too surprising that as the years had passed a reaction against 1916 had set in. Public attitudes to the Rising had become more critical, particularly as the propagandists for extreme nationalism had alienated the sympathies of many young people and had contributed to growing cynicism about the national movement of 1916 and the years that had followed. The case for 1916 had, I felt, been allowed to go by default, and so I went on to make what seemed to me, forty years ago, to be an already neglected case in favour of the Rising.

I argued that nothing that had happened over the fifty years since that event had proved – or even given strong grounds for believing – that the men of 1916 had been wrong in their conviction that in the years leading up to the Rising a sense of Irish national identity had been ebbing away, and needed a powerful catalyst to revive it. If they were right in this, I concluded, then anyone who believed that Ireland as an independent national entity had something to offer the world, and that the Irish people could do more for themselves and for their neighbours by self-reliant control of their own affairs, within whatever international framework might emerge in the increasingly inter-dependent world of the second half of the twentieth century, must acknowledged a debt to the leaders of 1916.

Recognising, of course, that others may legitimately take a different view of the balance of good and evil consequences of the Rising, I recall these views here because they demonstrate that at least to one observer in 1966 the situation we seemed to be facing at that time was not that the commemoration of the Rising risked reviving extreme nationalism but rather that already at that time there was a need to be reminded of the case to be made in favour of 1916.

Of course some may feel that the violence that broke out in Northern Ireland soon after that commemoration, and which lasted for almost thirty years thereafter, gave a measure of retrospective validation to Conor Cruise O’Brien’s 1981 view of the golden jubilee. But retrospective views – being wise after the event – is not history; and on the facts of what happened during the golden jubilee that year I believe Rory O’Dwyer’s analysis of those events stands up to scrutiny better than Conor Cruise O’Brien’s.

A particular strength of this book is the inclusion of three papers on the neglected issue of 1916-related events external to Ireland. One of these – the paper by Keith Jeffery onThe First World War and the Rising: mode, moment and memory’ – does the very useful historical job of putting Pearse’s militarism into its contemporary context, showing how much he was a man of his time in his ‘sanguine vision’, one that to us, several generations away from that Europe, seems so strange and off-putting. Jérôme aan de Wiel’s ‘Europe and the Irish crisis, 1900–17’ sets 1916 in its wider European context, and raises the little discussed question of whether the concluding stages of the home rule crisis in July 1914 may, perhaps, have encouraged Germany to engage militarily with France as well as Russia in the belief that, at that moment, Britain was too racked by internal conflict to come to France’s aid. Finally, Francis M. Carroll’s ‘America and the 1916 Rising’ throws new light on the role that the Irish in the United States played in the preparations for that event.

The other essays throw new light upon such issues as the deep pre-Rising antipathy between the Irish party and those who were preparing that event, as well as upon the evolution of Irish party attitudes to that event during the rest of the year 1916; the role of the Ulster Volunteers in stimulating the foundation of the Volunteers in the south; that of censorship and propaganda in the run-up to and aftermath of the Rising; Constance Markievicz’s triple feminist, labour and republican roles; the Easter mobilisation of the Volunteers in Cork; and an overview of the recent commemorations of the ninetieth anniversary of the Rising. The book also publishes for the first time the contemporary account written by Monsignor Michael Curran (the representative of Archbishop Walsh who was ill at the time) of his experiences and contacts during and just after the Rising.

Finally, President McAleese’s remarks in Cork at the conference that gave rise to this book – an address that, somewhat surprisingly I felt as a member of the audience on that occasion, led to some controversy at the time – provides a fitting opening to this rich historical feast.

INTRODUCTION

_________________________________________

Gabriel Doherty, Dermot Keogh

It is no coincidence that commemorations of major historical events usually incorporate both popular and academic elements. The process of reflection to which such anniversaries give rise provide a valuable public service, in that they stimulate open debate. In the popular sphere the forms in which such debates are conducted include public addresses, newspaper supplements, television and radio documentaries, symposia, and, in some cases, feature films that reach a mass, sometimes global, audience. At an academic level, too, such events are also a stimulus to activity. It is often the case that commemorations are the spur to the publication of invaluable collections of original source material, full scale biographies, or minutely researched monographs.

Commemorations also stimulate the production of edited volumes of scholarly essays, which subject the events or individuals under review to the findings of the latest historiography. Such publications serve as a convenient forum for the dissemination of academic debates, producing considered, competing and, at times, conflicting assessments by historians and others.1Ireland has been no exception to this rule, and over the last decade – which has seen, amongst many other events, commemorations of the Great Famine, the 1798 rebellion, and the Act of Union – worthy edited volumes on these and other topics have appeared on public bookshelves.2

Given that previous anniversaries of the Easter Rising have also been marked in this way it might reasonably be asked whether any useful purpose will be served by the addition of another tome to this small but highly distinguished corpus.3

Not surprisingly the editors of this volume believe the answer to this question is a resounding yes, the reasons for which relate to the circumstances of its origin. Its genesis is to be found in the conference 'The long revolution: the 1916 Rising in context', hosted by the Department of History, University College Cork, on 27–8 January 2006, to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. The conference was generously supported by the Commemorations Initiatives Fund of the Department of the Taoiseach, the Conference Fund of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, University College Cork, and by the Department of History, University College Cork.

The event attracted a great deal of media attention, largely in response to the opening address, ‘1916 – a view from 2006’, which was delivered by President McAleese. It is clear, such was the vigorous nature of this response, that the speech ranks among the most important to have been delivered on the subject of the state’s origins by a sitting President in recent decades. For that reason the editors are delighted to be able to reproduce the text in full herein.

The conference, however, encompassed far more than the President’s speech, central and significant though it undoubtedly was. The range of topics addressed by the other speakers – covering international, national and local dimensions of the Rising, and aspects of its intellectual, legal and symbolic legacy – and the informed question-and-answer sessions that followed each paper, ensured that the event was both an instructive and enjoyable affair. That certainly seems to have been the consensus of the 200-plus members of the public who were in attendance.

In answer, therefore, to the question as to the justification for the volume, there is an on-going, manifest public demand for the supply of reliable, informed opinion on the Rising. There is no doubt that the event continues to interest, fascinate, in some cases inspire and in others repel, large numbers of Irish people – witness the extraordinary degree of public engagement with, and involvement in, the various events held throughout the year to mark its ninetieth anniversary.

Given both the public level of interest in the Rising manifested over the past twelve months and its signal importance for the Irish polity, it is incumbent on those with a professional interest in the field to offer informed opinion in a timely, and appropriate, fashion. It is the view of the editors that the volume does just that.

Spanning the worlds of academia, politics, and the law; drawing on the expertise of both established scholars and their younger counterparts; building on previous research on the subject and utilising newly-available archival material, and revisiting old controversies and (perhaps) generating new ones, the volume will, we feel sure, make a worthy contribution to this much-discussed, and oft-misunderstood, event.

The work is made up of three intermingled elements, which vary greatly in length. The first comprises the eight papers delivered at the original conference, suitably revised to render them appropriate for publication. The second contains the seven papers that have been commissioned by the editors for inclusion in the volume. The third element is a single text. It contains relevant extracts from the Witness Statement given by Fr Michael Curran (secretary to William Walsh, archbishop of Dublin at the time of the Rising) to the Bureau of Military History, whose recently opened files have been one of the most welcome additions to the Irish historical scene in many years. It is included here as an exemplar of the new, previously under-utilised, or unreleased material upon which much of the analysis in the rest of the volume is based.

A word or two is in order regarding the title of the volume. It is the considered view of the editors that the events of 1916 can best be understood, neither as a starting point (though it clearly gave the republican cause a momentum that it had previously lacked) nor as a terminus (crucial though it undoubtedly was, for example in the subsequent collapse of the Irish party), but rather as a decisive turning point in the history of Ireland over thelongue durée. Quite clearly the roots of the Rising went as deep as its harvest was abundant, and both the build-up to, and legacy of, the event are covered here.

The volume does not aspire to being a comprehensive history of the Rising, and there are obvious omissions. Of these the cause of Labour is the most significant (a consequence of the speed with which the volume has been produced, and the demands upon the prospective contributor’s time, rather than wilful exclusion). Rather it seeks to identify and probe key interpretative issues associated with the event, with a view to stimulating debate in these (and other) areas in the build-up to the centenary of the Rising. As such the editors are confident that it will appeal to both popular and academic audiences.

1916 – A VIEW FROM 2006

____________________

Mary McAleese

How glad I am that I was not the mother of adult children in January 1916. Would my twenty year old son and his friends be among the tens of thousands in British uniform heading for the Somme, or would they be among the few, training in secret with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or with the Irish Volunteers? Would I, like so many mothers, bury my son this fateful year in some army’s uniform, in a formidably unequal country where I have no vote or voice, where many young men are destined to be cannon fodder, and women, widows? How many times did those men and women wonder what the world would be like in the longer-run as a result of the outworking of the chaos around them, this context we struggle to comprehend these years later? I am grateful that I, and my children, live in the longer-run; for while we could speculate endlessly about what life might be like if the Rising had not happened, or if the Great War had not been fought, we who live in these times know and inhabit the world that revealed itself because they happened.

April 1916 and the world is as big a mess as it is possible to imagine. The ancient monarchies, Austria, Russia and Germany, which plunged Europe into war, are on the brink of violent destruction. China is slipping into civil war. On the western front, Verdun is taking a dreadful toll and, in the east, Britain is only weeks away from its worst defeat in history. It’s a fighting world where war is glorified and death in uniform seen as the ultimate act of nobility, at least for one’s own side.

And on 24 April 1916, it was Easter Monday in Dublin, the second city of the extensive British empire which long included, among its captured dominions, the four provinces of Ireland. At four minutes past noon, from the steps of Dublin’s General Post Office, the President of the Provisional Government, Pádraig Pearse, read the Proclamation of independence.

The bald facts are well known and reasonably non-contentious. Their analysis and interpretation has been both continuous and controversial ever since. Even after ninety years a discussion, such as we are embarked upon here, is likely to provoke someone. But in a free and peaceful democracy, where complex things get figured out through public debate, that is as it should be.

With each passing year, post-Rising Ireland reveals itself and we who are of this strong independent and high-achieving Ireland would do well to ponder the extent to which today’s freedoms, values, ambitions and success rest on that perilous and militarily-doomed undertaking of nine decades ago, and on the words of that Proclamation. Clearly its fundamental idea was freedom, or in the words of the Proclamation ‘the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland’ but it was also a very radical assertion of the kind of republic a liberated Ireland should become. ‘The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts cherishing all of the children of the nation equally.’ It spoke of a parliament ‘representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women’ – this at a time when Westminster was still refusing to concede the vote to women on the basis that to do so would be to give in to terrorism. To our twenty first century ears these words seem a good fit for our modern democracy. Yet ninety years ago, even forty years ago, they seemed hopelessly naïve, and their long-term intellectual power was destined to be overlooked, as interest was focussed on the emotionally-charged political power of the Rising and the renewed nationalist fervour it evoked.

In the longer-term the apparent naïveté of the words of the Proclamation has filled out into a widely-shared political philosophy of equality and social inclusion in tune with the contemporary spirit of democracy, human rights, equality and anti-confessionalism. Read now in the light of the liberation of women, the development of social partnership, the focus on rights and equality, and the ending of the special position of the Catholic church to mention but a few, we see a much more coherent, and wider-reaching, intellectual event than may have previously been noted.

The kind of Ireland the heroes of the Rising aspired to was based on an inclusivity that, famously, would cherish ‘all the children of the nation equally … oblivious of the differences which have divided a minority from the majority in the past’. That culture of inclusion is manifestly a strong contemporary impulse working its way today through relationships with the north, with unionists, with the newcomers to our shores, with our marginalised, and with our own increasing diversity.

For many years the social agenda of the Rising represented an unrealisable aspiration; until now that is, when our prosperity has created a real opportunity for ending poverty and promoting true equality of opportunity for our people and when those idealistic words have started to become a lived reality and a determined ambition.

There is a tendency for powerful and pitiless elites to dismiss with damning labels those who oppose them. That was probably the source of the accusation that 1916 was an exclusive and sectarian enterprise. It was never that, though ironically it was an accurate description of what the Rising opposed.

In 1916 Ireland was a small nation attempting to gain its independence from one of Europe’s many powerful empires. In the nineteenth century an English radical described the occupation of India as a system of ‘outdoor relief ’ for the younger sons of the upper classes. The administration of Ireland was not very different, being carried on as a process of continuous conversation around the fire in the Kildare Street Club by past pupils of minor public schools. It was no way to run a country, even without the glass ceiling for Catholics.

Internationally, in 1916, planet earth was a world of violent conflicts and armies. It was a world where countries operated on the principle that the strong would do what they wished and the weak would endure what they must. There were few, if any, sophisticated mechanisms for resolving territorial conflicts. Diplomacy existed to regulate conflict, not to resolve it.

It was in that context that the leaders of the Rising saw their investment in the assertion of Ireland’s nationhood. They were not attempting to establish an isolated and segregated territory of ‘ourselves alone’ as the phrase ‘sinn féin’ is so often mistranslated, but a free country in which we ourselves could take responsibility for our own destiny, a country that could stand up for itself, have its own distinct perspective, pull itself up by its bootstraps, and be counted with respect among the free nations of Europe and the world.

A Google search for the phrase ‘narrow nationalism’ produces about 28,000 results. It is almost as though some people cannot use the word ‘nationalism’ without qualifying it by the word ‘narrow’. But that does not make it correct.

I have a strong impression that, to its enemies, both in Ireland and abroad, Irish nationalism looked like a version of the imperialism it opposed, a sort of ‘imperialism lite’ through which Ireland would attempt to be what the great European powers were – the domination of one cultural and ethnic tradition over others. It is easy to see how they might have fallen into that mistaken view, but mistaken they were. Irish nationalism, from the start, was a multilateral enterprise, attempting to escape the dominance of a single class and, in our case a largely foreign class, into a wider world. Those who think of Irish nationalists as narrow miss, for example, the membership many of them had of a universal church which brought them into contact with a vastly wider segment of the world than that open to even the most travelled imperial English gentleman. Many of the leaders had experience of the Americas, and in particular of North America with its vibrant attachment to liberty and democracy. Others of them were active participants in the international working class movements of their day. Whatever you might think of those involvements, they were universalist and global rather than constricted and blinkered.

To the revolutionaries, the Rising looked as if it represented a commitment to membership of the wider world. For too long they had chafed at the narrow focus of a unilateral empire which acted as it saw fit and resented having to pay any attention to the needs of others. In 1973 a free Irish republic would show by joining the European Economic Community that membership of a union was never our problem but, rather, involuntary membership of a union in which we had no say.

Those who are surprised by Ireland’s enthusiasm for the European Union, and think of it as a repudiation of our struggle for independence, fail to see Ireland’s historic engagement with the European continent and the Americas. Arguably Ireland’s involvement in the British Commonwealth up to the dominion conference of 1929 represents an attempt to promote Ireland’s involvement with the wider world even as it negotiated further independence from Britain. Éamon de Valera’s support for the League of Nations, our later commitment to the United Nations and our long pursuit of membership of the Common Market are all of a piece with our earlier engagements with Europe and the world which were so often frustrated by our proximity to a strong imperial power – a power which feared our autonomy, and whose global imperialism ironically was experienced as narrowing and restrictive to those who lived under it. We now can see that promoting the European ideal dovetails perfectly with the ideals of the men and women of 1916.

Paradoxically in the longer-run, 1916 arguably set in motion a calming of old conflicts with new concepts and confidence which, as they mature and take shape, stand us is in good stead today.

Our relationship with Britain, despite the huge toll of the Troubles, has changed utterly. In this, the year of the ninetieth anniversary of the Rising, the Irish and British governments, co-equal sovereign colleagues in Europe, are now working side-by-side as mutually respectful partners, helping to develop a stable and peaceful future in Northern Ireland based on the Good Friday Agreement. That agreement asserts equal rights and equal opportunities for all Northern Ireland’s citizens. It ends forever one of the Rising’s most difficult legacies, the question of how the people of this island look at partition. The constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom is accepted overwhelmingly by the electorate north and south. That position can only be changed by the electorate of Northern Ireland expressing its view exclusively through the ballot box. The future could not be clearer. Both unionists and nationalists have everything to gain from treating each other with exemplary courtesy and generosity, for each has a vision for the future to sell, and a coming generation, more educated than any before, freer from conflict than any before, more democratised and globalised than any before, will have choices to make and those choices will be theirs.

This year, the ninetieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising, and of the Somme, has the potential to be a pivotal year for peace and reconciliation, to be a time of shared pride for the divided grandchildren of those who died, whether at Messines or in Kilmainham.

The climate has changed dramatically since last September’s historic announcement of IRA decommissioning. As that new reality sinks in, the people of Northern Ireland will see the massive potential for their future, and that of their children, that is theirs for the taking. Casting my mind forward to ninety years from now I have no way of knowing what the longer-term may hold but I do know the past we are determined to escape from and I know the ambitions we have for that longer-term. To paraphrase the Proclamation, we are resolved to ‘pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole island’. We want to consign inequality and poverty to history. We want to live in peace. We want to be comfortable with, and accommodating of, diversity. We want to become the best friends, neighbours and partners we can be to the citizens of Northern Ireland.

In the hearts of those who took part in the Rising, in what was then an undivided Ireland, was an unshakeable belief that, whatever our personal political or religious perspectives, there was huge potential for an Ireland in which loyalist, republican, unionist, nationalist, Catholic, Protestant, atheist and agnostic pulled together to build a shared future, owned by one and all. That’s a longer-term to conjure with but, for now, reflecting back on the sacrifices of the heroes of 1916 and the gallingly unjust world that was their context, I look at my own context and its threads of connection to theirs. I am humbled, excited and grateful to live in one of the world’s most respected, admired and successful democracies, a country with an identifiably distinctive voice in Europe and in the world, an Irish republic, a ‘sovereign independent state’ to use the words of the Proclamation. We are where freedom has brought us. A tough journey, but more than vindicated by our contemporary context. Like every nation that had to wrench its freedom from the reluctant grip of empire, we have our idealistic and heroic founding fathers and mothers – our Davids to their Goliaths. That small band who proclaimed the Rising inhabited a sea of death, an unspeakable time of the most profligate world-wide waste of human life. Yet their deaths rise far above the clamour – their voices, insistent still.

Enjoy the conference and the rows it will surely rise.

EUROPE AND THE IRISH CRISIS, 1900–17

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Jérôme aan de Wiel

In 1988 Professor Dermot Keogh wrote: ‘The theme of Ireland and twentieth century Europe has not been tackled in any systematic way.’1Sixteen years later, in 2004, Professor Joseph Lee emphasised this fact again: ‘The subject of Ireland’s relations with continental European countries in the twentieth century is a grossly neglected one.’2Yet, as various diplomatic and military archives located in Berlin, Brussels, Freiburg, Paris, Rome and Vienna reveal, continental Europe was much interested in Ireland between the turn of the century and the end of the First World War. For a long time, Ireland was of interest to foreign powers opposed to England and then Britain. By occupying her they believed that the British would have to surrender. Spain tried first, followed by France, but all in vain.3Even imperial Russia seemed to have had some interest, as a document in the French military archives shows that ‘a Franco-Russian landing in Ireland’ might have been contemplated in the summer of 1902 just after the Boer War, which had exposed serious weaknesses in the British army.4When the Great War broke out in 1914, Germany’s turn to play the Irish card had come.

The aims of this paper are to shed new light on Germany’s involvement in Ireland and also to analyse France’s reaction to the events in Dublin in 1916. Austria-Hungary had been interested in Ireland before the beginning of the hostilities in Europe. It would seem that Vienna bore in mind the home rule crisis in the summer of 1914 in the formulation of her disastrous policy towards Serbia that would ultimately lead to war. How was the news of the Easter Rising received in Vienna and Budapest? Also, the Vatican knew about two weeks beforehand the date of the Rising. What was Eoin MacNeill’s role in the events? The paper will also confirm that some British officials at the highest level took the decision to let the Rising happen intentionally in order to decapitate the republican movement. This is proven by the existence in the German archives of a document entitled Aufgabe P.

The years between 1890 and 1907 saw some major realignments in the system of European alliances. Briefly, in 1892 a military alliance was signed between France and Russia. Owing to naval tensions between Britain and Germany, theEntente Cordialebetween Britain and France saw the light in 1904. Eventually, the Anglo-Russian Agreement became a reality in 1907. The latter led to the formation of the so-called Triple Entente countries – Britain, France and Russia. It must be pointed out that the Entente and the Agreement the British signed were not military alliances, but from Germany and Austria’s perspective this constituted a strategic encirclement.5From that moment onwards, the German leaders would try to drive a wedge between their rivals but their efforts were not successful. In a future war, which many statesmen and militaries expected sooner or later, the German general staff relied on the famous ‘Schlieffen Plan’, which consisted in first knocking out France before rapidly transferring all divisions to the east front to deal with the advancing Russian army.6But the Germans were most preoccupied with the United Kingdom and its vast empire, which they considered to be their most dangerous enemy. Would the British interfere if Germany entered a war against France and Russia? This question bordered on the obsessive in Berlin. But did Britain not have a weak western flank, Ireland, which might be exploited or which might prevent her from entering a continental war? Germany was well aware that Ireland was rife with political tensions due to the nationalists’ struggle for home rule, which was opposed by unionists.

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was closely following the Irish crisis. He was personally informed by Dr Theodor Schiemann, a historian, who was corresponding with George Freeman.7Freeman was a journalist who specialised in foreign affairs and was then working for theGaelic Americanin New York, the newspaper owned by the Irish republican and Clan na Gael leader, John Devoy. Freeman and Schiemann had begun their correspondence in 1906 and had been put in touch with each other by a German editor working in Japan. Freeman had offered to work ‘against England’ [sic].8Most of their correspondence concerned anti-British propaganda and occasionally work of a cloak-and-dagger nature. Once, Schiemann asked how many Irishmen were serving in the royal navy, the answer to which Freeman was not able to ascertain.9Obviously the idea was to figure out whether Irishmen could be relied upon to disrupt the organisation of the royal navy.

As for the Kaiser, he became more and more frustrated by Britain’s attitude towards Germany and more and more aggressive in his comments regarding Ireland. He was being kept up to date about the latest developments in the Irish crisis by reports from his embassy in London. When, on 14 September 1912, Richard von Kühlmann, the chargé d’affairesof the embassy, suggested that the crisis would weaken England as a world power because of the influence the Irish exercise in America, the Kaiser wrote in the margin: ‘That would be a great boon.’10There was also some interaction between Germany and Austria-Hungary about Ireland. In August 1907 Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow sent a letter to Aloys von Aehrenthal, the powerful Minister of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, in which he explained that the British would probably not be involved in a European war lest uprisings should happen in Ireland and India. Bülow explained that this might be useful to know for Emperor Franz Josef before his scheduled meeting with King Edward VII.11There was even more. In November 1908 the Irish nationalist Frank Hugh O’Donnell met the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, Count Albert von Mensdorff, in London. He had come to offer a plan of alliance between nationalist Ireland and Austria-Hungary designed to break the strategic encirclement imposed by the Triple Entente. Mensdorff thought that O’Donnell was ‘a little … eccentric’ but was sufficiently impressed to send a full report to Aehrenthal in Vienna. Interestingly, although the report was marked ‘secret’, the Austro-Hungarians passed it on to their German allies.12The matter was entrusted to Dr Schiemann, who lost no time in contacting George Freeman in New York. Freeman, however, advised the Germans to have nothing to do with O’Donnell as he was not reliable.13

It must be emphasised here that these early contacts between the Irish republicans and the Germans did not result in concrete measures. After all, when the war broke out in 1914 there were no risings in Ireland nor anywhere else in the British empire, except a short rebellion led by Christiaan de Wet in South Africa. Not even contingency plans had been thought out, something bitterly regretted by Freeman in 1915.14The explanation of this lies probably in the fact that deep down the Germans still believed they could reach an agreement with the British and make sure that they would not interfere in a general war on the continent.

The home rule crisis intensified when, in 1913, the unionists set up the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the nationalists retorted by establishing the Irish Volunteers. It now looked as if a large scale civil war was only a matter of time. The Ulster crisis attracted the foreign press, but not only journalists arrived in Ireland. Baron Georg von Franckenstein, from the Austro-Hungarian embassy in London, was among them, and his stay in the country became controversial.15It should not be forgotten thatthe 25,000 rifles delivered to the UVF on the night of 24–5 April 1914 came from the Steyr armament factory in Upper Austria.16The archives in Vienna reveal that Franckenstein wrote a report precisely on 24 April.17This was a most striking coincidence to say the least and prompts the question as to what he was really doing in Ireland all the more since the report has since gone missing. It is unlikely to be ever recovered as vast amounts of secret files were destroyed in Vienna after the war.18In 1939Franckenstein published his memoirs in which he categorically denied any wrong-doing. The problem is that he seemed to have contradicted himself. In February 1913 he had been in India, and as he himself stated in his memoirs: ‘The purpose of my travels and stay in India was to study the general political situation and to ascertain what attitude the natives would adopt in a world war.’19This was exactly what people accused Franckenstein of having done in Ireland. Similar accusations were levelled at Richard von Kühlmann of the German embassy, who was suspected of having gone on a secret mission to Ulster in the summer of 1914. Like Franckenstein, Kühlmann denied everything. The plot thickens here, however, as Margot Asquith, wife of the British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, clearly remembered Kühlmann telling her that he had gone to Ulster.20Both men’s roles remain cloaked in mystery.

When the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by a young Serbian nationalist, serious tensions developed between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, involving the major European powers. Historians have named this the ‘July crisis’ during which politicians, diplomats and militaries were wondering who was going to do what. What was Ireland’s role in the unfolding events that would lead to the outbreak of the First World War? As seen, Germany was essentially obsessed by the position of the United Kingdom. As Professor A.T.Q. Stewart wrote in 1967: ‘The influence of the Irish crisis on German policy has generally been underestimated.’21This continues to be the case today as the many books dealing with the outbreak of the war rarely take into account the Irish crisis. And yet there can be little doubt about the veracity of Professor Stewart’s assertion. Indeed, on 26 July 1914 the Belgian ambassador in Berlin, Baron Henri Beyens, wrote that Germany could now wage war ‘in extremely favourable circumstances’. Among the reasons he mentioned was the situation in the United Kingdom: ‘England … is paralysed by her internal dissensions and her Irish quarrels’.22Beyens could not have known how right he was for on the very same day a British regiment opened fire on a nationalist crowd in Dublin after a gun-running operation for the Irish Volunteers at Howth. Four people died and forty were wounded. The incident became known as the Bachelor’s Walk massacre. The long-awaited civil war looked to be on its way. The next day Albert Ballin, the German ship owner and personal friend of the Kaiser, reported from London, where he had been sent to ascertain the political situation, that Britain’s reaction to Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia had been very ‘mild’. He related it to the ‘present situation’.23Undoubtedly, Ballin had the Irish crisis in mind.

Still on 27 July Germany rejected a British offer of mediation emanating from Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, and advised the Austro-Hungarians to also reject it.24They took this piece of advice.25Indeed, why should they accept the offer of a disunited United Kingdom? Besides, on 12 July, twelve days before the Austro-Hungarians’ fateful ultimatum to the Serbians, their ambassador in Berlin, Count Ladislaus Szögyény, had already informed them that the Germans thought that ‘above all, England is anything but bellicose at the moment’.26In Britain politicians at the highest level and of all shades of opinion began to suspect that the Central Powers were taking into account the Irish crisis in the formulation of their policy. On 30 July Prime Minister Herbert Asquith secretly met his political opponents, Andrew Bonar Law (leader of the Conservative party) and Sir Edward Carson (leader of the Unionist party), somewhere in the suburbs of London. Bonar Law and Carson wanted the prime minister ‘to postpone for the time being the second reading of the Amending bill [which provided for the possible exclusion from home rule of certain Ulster counties] … in the interest of the international situation’. Asquith replied: ‘I agreed and read to them the latest telegrams from Berlin which, in my judgement, assume that the German government are calculating upon our internal weakness to affect our foreign policy.’ A short time later he met John Redmond, the leader of the Irish party, to whom he related his rather extraordinary meeting. Redmond ‘thought it an excellent chance of putting off the Amending bill’.27

On 3 August 1914, when Germany declared war on France, Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Austro-Hungarian commander in chief, wrote: ‘England’s attitude proves to be unfriendly and doubtful. To [our] military attaché [in London], it seems, however, that there is no desire for war for the time being, taking into account the Ulster crisis and the civil war.’28To point out that Conrad and his military attaché were wrong, as there was no civil war, is to miss the point. What matters here is their interpretation, and this interpretation must have encouragedConrad and others in persevering in their offensive against Serbia. That there was no civil war in Ireland was largely due to Redmond’s intervention in the House of Commons on 3 August when he put forward that the UVF and the Irish Volunteers would defend Ireland against a foreign (i.e. German) invasion. It can be safely said that Redmond spoiled Berlin and Vienna’s expectations. It also helps to explain why the British cabinet was so hesitant in committing itself to help France and Russia. On 1 and 2 August Grey had told the dismayed Russian and French ambassadors that it would be difficult to send a force of 100,000 British soldiers to the continent because of possible inner troubles in the United Kingdom.29On4 August, a genuinely United Kingdom declared war on Germany and, on 12 August, on Austria-Hungary. Ambassador Mensdorff had already warned Vienna on 3 August: ‘Navy and army are mobilised but there are still no decisions as to how they will be used. Enthusiastic adoption in parliament; approval of the opposition, including the two Irish parties.’30Asfor Redmond, he later exhorted the Irish Volunteers to fight abroad. This provoked a division within the Volunteer movement and the expulsion of the pro-Redmond members from the Executive Committee. But only a few thousand rank and file members remained faithful to their leader and founder, Professor Eoin MacNeill. Within the ranks of these Irish Volunteers, secret members of the IRB were determined to rise against the British while they were fighting against the Germans; among them were Pádraig Pearse and Joseph Mary Plunkett.

During the first months of the war in Europe, the Irish nationalist Roger Casement was busy negotiating an alliance with the German ambassador to the United States, Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff. Later Casement and Franz von Papen, the military attaché of the embassy, worked out the idea of setting up an Irish brigade composed of Irish prisoners of war detained in German camps.31Bernstorff informed Berlin that Casement would arrive in Germany soon.32What Bernstorff did not know, however, was that his messages were being intercepted by the British. On 5 August 1914 a team of British secret servicemen disguised as fishermen had cut the transatlantic cables between Germany and the United States. This forced the Germans to use other cables or use wireless that the British could either tap or intercept. It now became a question of being able to decode German messages. The British were blessed with extraordinary luck. On 11 August the Australian navy confiscated a codebook from a German ship, the crew of which had ignored the fact that war had been declared. On 6 September the Russians found a second codebook on a German battleship and sent itto London. Eventually, on 30 November, an English trawler found in its nets a third codebook! By that time the British had already cracked one of the German codes. A room in the admiralty in London became specialised in deciphering. It was the soon-to-be legendary room 40 under the command of Captain Reginald Hall.33All this meant that communications between New York and Berlin would be intercepted, including the ones of the future Easter Rising.