Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

THE EASTER RISING AND AFTERMATH 127
German assistance was crucial to the insurrection’s success. Dr
Liam O’Briain recalled encountering Sean MacDermott, as a
prisoner in Richmond Barracks, saying ‘We were certain the
Germans would be here’ 22 while Pearse, in a letter to his mother,
wrote ‘The help I expected from Germany failed; the British sunk
the ships’. 23 Only days before the rising, the German Embassy in
Washington received a request from the IRB’s Irish-American
supporters requesting an air raid and a naval attack on England to
coincide with the insurrection, followed by a landing of troops and
munitions and some officers, perhaps from an airship. 24 The
British recorded that on 24 April 1916, the day the rebellion broke
out in Dublin, a Zeppelin raid was made on East Anglia, while on
the following day a German naval raid was made on Lowestoft and
Yarmouth, and a Zeppelin raid on Essex and Kent. These were
interpreted by the British as the German diversions requested by
the rebels. 25
The concept of an alliance with the German Empire was not new.
It had initially been developed in Bulmer Hobson’s IRB newspaper,
Irish Freedom. An 1911 article entitled ‘When Germany Fights
England’ listed the options the IRB saw for Ireland. It predicted an
Anglo-German war within the coming decade as ‘very probable’,
because England, which was the richest country in the world due
to her empire’s trade, barred Germany, late into the race, from
imperial expansion. Irish Freedom saw England’s chances of
victory as not wholly certain if her navy, not in action since
Nelson’s time, was as inefficient as her army was in South Africa.
Ireland, it believed, could not wait for England or Germany to
decide their line of action for them. Ireland had to pursue her own
policy. Ireland would not be a negligible quantity, for England
would need every man it could get, and Germany would need to
detach every man she could from England, so recruits from Ireland
over the coming decade might be the deciding factor. If Ireland
helped England win she would have gained absolutely nothing; if
Ireland helped England, and England lost, the position would be
worse, for England would take food from Ireland and Germany
might take the fight to Ireland. England would be beaten, not
broken, but would have to pay for the war. Ireland could not
remain neutral for she would be dragged in after England, sharing
in her ruin if she lost, and would then receive hostility from both
Germany and England; the former because she equated Ireland
with England, and the latter because no German occupation could
be permanent—she might lose her colonies but a nation she would
remain—and she would take her revenge upon Ireland. An
alternative policy would be to support Germany, which would be