From The Irish Volunteer, October 17, 1914.
Speaking at the Mansion House recruiting meeting, Mr. Asquith declared that some time in the future—perhaps he didn’t like to promise, but he felt quite sure, the Irish Volunteers would become ‘an integral and characteristic part of the forces of the Crown.’ There is no Crown in Ireland, so obviously he meant the British Crown. The Union Defence Force of South Africa is not one of the forces of the Crown. It has recently been ‘requested’—not ordered—to take certain German positions. Similar autonomous forces exist in Australia and Canada. Those forces are not ‘Crown’ forces; they exist for the defence of their respective countries. Occasionally a small percentage of them volunteer to serve England out of gratitude for the protection afforded them by England’s army and more especially England’s navy.
They are not under the control of the British War Office. The British War Office could not dismiss a man of them. And all this aloofness from War Office control is part of a well-considered scheme of minding their own business and fighting in defence of their own acquired rights and liberties.
The Asquith-Redmond scheme is vastly different. Their plan is to hand over the Irish Volunteers to the British War Office. Ireland is not to have the status of a British Colony. Ireland, deprived of its native Parliament, is asked to hand over its native defence force to alien control, to the control of the British War Office under Earl Kitchener.
Kitchener was better known once to readers of The Freeman’s Journal as Kitchener of Omdurman. That was in the days before the leaders of the Irish people became recruiting sergeants for Kitchener’s army. Kitchener, into whose tender came Mr. Redmond would commit the Irish Volunteers, spent a great deal of his time in fighting the Arab tribes who had the audacity to take up arms in the Soudan in defence of their miserable rights and liberties. After the battle—or battue—of Omdurman, according to the English ‘Standard,’ quoted in the English ‘Saturday Review,’
‘bodies of the Soudanese troops were told off to perform the repulsive but necessary task of killing the wounded Dervishes who might be shaming death on the battlefield. Unless this odious work had been efficiently accomplished it would have been impossible for our men to have crossed the ground without the occurrence of many casualties. Another defence of the proceeding which has been advanced is that every man who is saved must have proper medical attention, which means diminishing the precious tock of lint and other necessaries, besides making fresh demands on the limited staff.’
Our own free and independent Evening Telegraph in its anti-recruiting days wrote—
‘However, the fact remains that an Englishman as patriotic as any jingo of them all (Wilfred Scawen Blunt) acknowledges that the much-vaunted victory was a bloody, unnecessary and, on the whole, discreditable performance.’
Sirdar Kitchener was the victor of Omdurman. Sirdar Kitchener is now a partner in the firm of Redmond, Asquith and Co., whose plot to purchase the bodies and souls of the Irish Volunteers by a post dated cheque on the credulity of the Irish people was blown sky high by the manifesto of the founders of the movement.
And witness the unpurchasable Daily Independent before it accepted the recruiting advertisement—
‘Killing the wounded and even the women caught on the field of battle has been amongst the habitual horrors practised by the British in every campaign in the Soudan in the past.’
Great is the power of British gold! The leopard has now changed his spots. To-day the ‘victor’ of Omdurman appeals to Irish slaves through the mouths of Redmond, Devlin and Nugent to help him in this present war for the defence of small nationalities, for the upholding of honour, religion and truth! Shades of the wounded men, women and children murdered in far-off Africa, and of our own kith and kin shot down on Sunday, July 26th, at Bachelor’s Walk.
It is for the Irish Volunteers now to say whether it is their intention to become ‘an integral and characteristic part of the forces of the Crown.’
ÉAMONN CEANNT.