Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

THE EASTER RISING AND AFTERMATH 137
warned that harshly applied punitive measures ‘will most assuredly
cause embit terment and upset the national stability’. 55 The
Fermanagh News, comparing the South African precedent with the
aftermath of the rising, found it difficult to understand the
continuing arrests, with men being dragged to prison, whose only
offence was that they belonged to Sinn Fein when it was a
‘pastoral organisation’. If the rising proved anything it was that as
a whole Ireland was peaceful; but, warned the newspaper, a
continuance of the ‘reign of terror’ would cause a revulsion of
feeling, which already existed, and would grow rapidly: a few more
shootings and round-ups ‘might precipitate a real rebellion in
which the Sinn Fein party would have no part’. 56
In the House of Commons, John Dillon added legitimacy to the
rebels’ cause when he asked why the insurgents could not have
been treated as their counterparts in South Africa had, and
criticised the imposition of martial law and its effect on the
nationalist population. Referring to the executions, Dillon declared
‘it is not murderers who are being executed; it is insurgents who
have fought a clean fight, a brave fight, however misguided, and it
would be a damned good thing for you if your soldiers were able
to put up as good a fight as did those men in Dublin—three
thousand men against twenty thousand with machine guns and
artillery’. 57 The Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick, Edward
O’Dwyer, refused General Maxwell’s request that he discipline two
of his priests who showed sympathy with the rebels, replying ‘You
took good care that no plea for mercy should interpose on behalf
of the poor young fellows who surrendered to you in Dublin….
Personally, I regard your action with horror, and I believe that it
has outraged the conscience of the country’. N.Canon Murphy, in
Kilkenny, summed up the attitude of many of the nationalist
community when he wrote:
from every quarter we have the same account; that the poor
foolish young fellows made a clean and gallant fight. There
were no stags or skulkers amongst them. They stood by each
other to the last. Hence a great wave of sympathy has gone
out to their memory from every true Irish heart. And we do
not relish the denunciatory resolutions published in the
Freeman every day. We should leave these things to the bitter
enemies of Ireland…. They loved their country not at all
wisely, but too well…. May God grant rest, light and peace, to
our fallen Volunteers! 58