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From: "conaught" <>
Subject: [MAYO] Easter Week Series #17
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 18:35:35 -0700


Erskine Childers - Born June 25, 1870 in London. Author and Irish
Nationalist. Among his writing was the FRAMEWORK OF HOMERULE. He was
educated at Trinity College and Cambridge and served as a Clerk in the House
of Commons from 1895-1910. His father was English and his mother was Irish,
a Barton of Glendalough House, County Wicklow. Robert Barton was his cousin.
He was in the Boer War in 1899. He married Mary Ellen Osgood of Boston in
1904. They received as one of their wedding gifts the yacht, Asgard. It was
later to play an important part in the history of Ireland. In 1914 Erskine
Childers, his wife, Mary Spring-Rice and Gordon Shephard among the crew
transported arms to Howth for the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers marched
towards Dublin but were met by the police, all but 19 of the weapons were
saved and those 19 were broken in the struggle. At the same time the
Orangemen in Belfast were well armed and allowed to march in the open.

In March 1921 when Dail Eireann's Publicity Director was arrested, Erskine
Childers was appointed to replace him. He along with Frank Gallagher
published the Irish Bulletin.
Childers was brilliant and quite gifted with words. When Lloyd George
introduced the "Better Government of Ireland Bill" and tried to appeal to
American public opinion and compared Ireland's fight for Independence with
the secession of the southern states in the United States in the 1860s,
Childers wrote an eloquent reply.

"The Irish answer to this declaration of war - this heroic defiance of the
weak by the strong is something like the following: we do not attempt
secession. Nations cannot secede from a rule they have never accepted. We
have never accepted yours and never will. Lincoln's reputation is safe from
your comparison. He fought to abolish slavery, you fight to maintain it. As
to "resources" yours to ours are infinity to zero. You own a third of the
earth by conquest; you have great armies, a navy so powerful that it can
starve a whole continent, and a superabundance of every instrument of
destruction that science can devise. You wield the greatest aggregate of
material force every concentrated in the hands of one power; and while
canting about your championship of small nations, you use it to crush out
liberty in ours. We are a small people with a population dwindling without
cessation under your rule. We have no armaments nor any prospect of
obtaining them. Nevertheless, we accept your challenge and will fight you
"with the same determination, with the same resolve' as the American States,
North and South, put into their fight for their freedom against your
Empire." (taken from Irish Bulletin March 4, 1920).


Erskine Childers along with de Valera and others wrote the outline of the
draft for the Treaty with England. Erskine Childers was in the delegation
sent to London to work out a Treaty. He was opposed to the Treaty. Even
while on the move during the Civil War Childers was never without his
printing press. He constantly tried to educate people through the written
word. He was arrested by Free State Government troops in November 1922.
The day after his arrest Churchill in a unprecedented speech about a
prisoner said" I have seen with satisfaction that the mischief-making
murderous renegade, Erskine Childres has been captured. No man has done
more harm nor shown more genuine malice, or endeavored to brig a greater
curse upon the common people of Ireland than this strange being, actuated by
a deadly and malignant hatred for the land of his birth." (One wonders if
Churchill hated Childers because he was born in England and worked for the
English government and now fought for Irish freedom or if he felt so
threatened by this brilliant man and his great use of words). Erskine
Childers was shot at dawn on November 24, 1922 in Beggards Bush Barracks,
before he had a chance to appeal his death sentence.

Before Erskine Childers died he wrote to his wife -
"My beloved country, God send you courage, victory and rest, and to all our
people harmony and love. It is 6:00 A.M. You will be pleased to see how
imperturbably normal and tranquil I have been this night, and am. It seems
perfectly simple and inevitable, like lying down after a long day's work".

No complaints, regrets, bitterness, just amazing courage like so many others
who gave their lives for Ireland.

© 2001
Margaret Kristich

All rights reserved

References:

A Dictionary of Irish Biography by Henry Boylan;Roberts Rinehart;
1998;Niwot, Colorado

The Irish Republic by Dorothy Macardle;Corgi Books 1968; London

Michael Collins, The Man Who Made Ireland by Tim Pat Coogan; p 124; Roberts
Rinehart Publishers; 1992; Boulder, Colorado

The Anglo-Irish Treaty by Frank Gallagher;Hutchinson of London,1965



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