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America: Setting the Scene

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America: Setting the Scene 6 America: Setting the Scene When Patrick McCartan arrived in America with the petition for President Wilson which the IRB leaders had signed in Fleming’s Hotel in Dublin on 18 June 1917, he was initially employed by Joseph McGarrity and was later appointed editor of McGarrity’s Irish Press. McGarrity was a wealthy Irish- American businessman based in Philadelphia. He was a Clan na Gael veteran and a member of the FOIF Executive (the American-Irish foundation established in March 1916). He founded the Philadelphia newspaper the Irish Press in 1918 specifically to further the cause of Irish independence. McGarrity, McCartan and their associate, Dr William Maloney, disagreed fundamentally with three of the key mem- bers of the FOIF, Cohalan, Dalton and Devoy, as to what ap- proach should be adopted by Irish-American lobbyists towards the American government. They did not want money and time wasted on fighting PresidentWilson’s ‘League of Nations’ concept. In addition, McGarrity’s group argued vehemently that all money collected by the FOIF should be sent to Ireland. 97 Diarmuid Lynch: A Forgotten Irish Patriot With the passing into American law of the Espionage Act in June 1917, new and intrusive restrictions had been applied to publications, meetings, speeches and lobbying of politicians – all activities which had been key tools in the campaign of the FOIF and Clan na Gael. Furthermore, with America’s entry to the First World War, the close relationship fostered since 1914 between German Americans and Irish Americans was viewed with cold suspicion by the authorities. Former US President Theodore Roosevelt suggested in January 1918 that leading Irish Americans should be impris- oned as ‘enemy aliens’. Until the Great War ended, Lynch was routinely followed from his home to the FOIF office in Broadway, where he worked, and back: For months, I was, day by day, shadowed by at least two secret service men (who were occasionally relieved by relays) all the way from my residence to my office or to any address at which I had an appointment, and back again to my home, a matter of twelve miles, more or less, in each direction. If and when I made evening calls, the same procedure held.1 A recent release of British Intelligence records reveals that British Intelligence shared information on Lynch with its American counterpart during 1918 when the American State Department was considering revoking his American citizen- ship.2 A report in 1919 informed them that ‘Diarmuid Lynch is Director-in-Chief in America’ (of the IRB).3 98 America: Setting the Scene On 8 April 1918, Daniel Cohalan told a gathering of Irish Americans at Carnegie Hall that they would be loyal to the USA, but that they would equally hold President Wilson to his declaration: ‘We shall fight … for the rights and liberties of small nations’.4 The FOIF was determined that this statement must apply to the small nation of Ireland. In his closing speech to the Race Convention in May of that year, Cohalan reiterated the ‘Americanism’ of the Irish in America, emphasising repeatedly that Irish immigrants had always loyally supported the USA, had fought in the American War of Independence against Britain and had become steadfast citizens in their adherence to American ideals. He used the occasion to highlight the effective use the British government made of propaganda against the nationalist movement in Ireland and against Irish Americans, pointing out the necessity of counterbalancing that damaging propaganda by acquainting the American people with the facts concerning British misrule in Ireland: ‘If you leave to the enemies of Ireland the supplying of the information by which American public opinion is to be convinced, you will have nobody but yourselves to blame, if upon the misinformation which may be furnished, the case goes against you in that matter.’5 Cohalan had been appointed a judge of the Supreme Court in New York in 1912 and was a politician of significant influ- ence. He had himself been the target of a calculated attack by intelligence agencies in September 1917, when documentary evidence was simultaneously published by both the British and 99 Diarmuid Lynch: A Forgotten Irish Patriot Americans that revealed his involvement with Roger Case- ment’s attempt to smuggle German armaments into Ireland for the 1916 insurrection. When Devoy and the Clan castigated the alignment of America with Great Britain in successive issues of The Gaelic American and vehemently opposed the intention of the British government to introduce conscription in Ireland, a government ban meant that The Gaelic American could no longer be posted to its many recipients in the US and abroad using the US mail system.6 During May and June 1918, intelligence sources in Britain and in the USA released reports of an alleged ‘German Plot’ in Ireland, which led to the mass arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of nationalists. The reports were reproduced in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to even greater levels of public hostility to the Irish-American population. The Espionage Act was followed in 1918 by the more repressive measures of the Sedition Act. The FOIF operated a muted campaign until the war ended, and that did not sit well with some of its members. McGarrity’s group was deeply exasperated by the measured programme followed by the organisation. Liam Mellows, a prominent member of the Irish Volunteers who had led the 1916 insurgents in Galway, was also frustrated by the attitude of the FOIF. Mellows had been sent to the USA by the IRB as a mouthpiece for its nationalist cause after months spent in hiding in Ireland following the Rising. After 100 America: Setting the Scene he arrived in New York in December 1916, Devoy had given him a job on the staff of The Gaelic American. Mellows was well aware that the propaganda war in the US by British Intelligence was a menacing threat to the cause of Irish nationalists. He wrote to his brother Barney in November 1917 and complained of the propaganda directed at Irish- American activists. ‘English “airgead” [money] is like water here. Press largely owned or controlled by Northcliffe, hence violently pro-E [English] and bitterly anti-Irish.’7 In February 1919 he addressed the Irish Race Convention at Philadelphia and referred to the hostile propaganda campaign: ‘There has been a propaganda war carried out seditiously and vindictively, not alone among the people of Ireland but against the Irish Race the world over. That propaganda has been started for the purpose and maintained for the purpose of defeating the aspirations of the Irish people.’8 As time passed Mellows became increasingly infuriated by the muted campaign for Irish self-determination which the FOIF was pursuing while the Great War lasted. Mellows’ sympathies were now on the side of those calling for more strident action: Joe McGarrity, Dr Patrick McCartan and Dr William Maloney. Following the end of the war, President Woodrow Wilson was determined that the question of Irish self-determination would not intrude at the Paris Peace Conference. He did not want to antagonise Britain, as he needed its support for his cherished project, the League of Nations. As 1919 progressed, 101 Diarmuid Lynch: A Forgotten Irish Patriot Devoy and Cohalan mounted an intensive publicity campaign against this League. The long-standing animosity between Woodrow Wilson and Cohalan, the recognised spokesman for the Irish-American lobby, worsened as the clamorous campaign of the FOIF against the League of Nations escalated. *** When Diarmuid Lynch disembarked at Ellis Island on 6 May 1918, he was a man of notoriety: an American citizen who had played a key role in the 1916 insurrection against the British government, America’s ally in the Great War. He had survived the death penalty and had served time in eight British prisons. As a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB, Director of Communications for the Volunteers and Sinn Féin Director for Food, he left Ireland in a blaze of popular support and publicity. The America he was returning to was a country marked- ly more hostile towards immigrant groups, such as the Irish Americans, than it had previously been, because of its align- ment with Great Britain in the Great War. In a telegram to his wife on 14 May, Lynch wrote, ‘Tell Mick that friends here consider it not advisable to have Harry [Boland] come, pending further advice.’9 Lynch’s return was fêted by sections of the Irish-American community, and he was taken instantly to the heart of the FOIF. His closest friends in America, Cohalan and Dalton, 102 America: Setting the Scene were its executive officers, and Devoy had been a founding member. Proposed by Dalton and seconded by Gertrude Kelly, Lynch’s selection for the post of National Secretary of the FOIF on 19 May at the second Irish Race Convention was almost uncontested. When Lynch was introduced to the capacity crowd by the chairman, Revd T. J. Hurton, according to the report published in a May issue of The Gaelic American, ‘The whole Convention stood up and cheered him to the echo, remaining standing for several minutes.’ In a long speech peppered with prolonged applause by the audience, Lynch threw down the gauntlet to those who impeded the realisation of Irish independence: ‘The Ireland of today is not the Ireland of 1914. It knows exactly what it wants.’ Lynch refuted the accusations then rife in the American and British press, of a continuing German Plot.10 At the Annual Convention of the New York Gaelic League, Lynch again received a standing ovation and was thanked warmly for ‘representing the executive of that organisation on the Coiste Gnótha in Ireland for several years past’.11 Under Lynch’s secretaryship, the FOIF moved headquarters from 1482 Broadway to larger and more central premises which he secured at the Sun Building, 280 Broadway.
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