and Paddy Ryan, all nominally from Dublin.29
Eight days later, on 4 November, at its inaugural meeting which was held in Fleming’s Hotel, the national executive, in addressing the topic that the upcoming members of the GHQ should work full time and be paid a wage,30 was faced for the first time with the organisational consequences of the current feeling that the Volunteers were becoming, both by accident and design, the nucleus of the army of an emerging Irish State. Quite a number of the members were not happy with that development.31 Whatever their reasons were, one meeting did not solve the matter. Hence, two weeks later, it was agreed that a sub-committee should be formed for the purpose of interviewing suitable Volunteers and forming a list of ‘men of outstanding ability and integrity … [who would] eventually be prepared to give up their civil occupations and devote all their time and ability to staff work’. Also, because the organisation of itself could not finance a professional command, it was decided that the best agency to approach for the necessary cash was the IRB. Bizarrely, then, Brugha vouched for the Organisation’s bona fides and Collins chipped in that he personally knew some IRB sources who could be productively contacted!32
The membership of the subcommittee is uncertain. One opinion was that it was made up of de Valera (as interviewer), along with Brugha, Collins, Staines and Rory O’Connor.33 And another opinion, Mulcahy’s, suggested that it was composed of ‘the military directors’, i.e. Collins, Mulcahy, Staines, O’Connor and Lynch.34 But, either way, there was a flaw in the interview process, in that some of the main candidates, who were eligible for high office, remunerated or otherwise, were part of the shortlisting panel. Also, the best part of five months had to pass before findings were presented to a meeting of the national executive.
Regardless, it transpired, according to Mulcahy, that, on the evening before said executive meeting, he, Collins, Staines35 and O’Connor, i.e. four from the list of military directors, together with O’Hegarty, O’Sullivan, Seán MacMahon and Dick McKee, made their preparations, one alleged decision of which was that they would put Mulcahy’s name forward for the CS position.36
The following is Mulcahy’s account of that chain of events:
The Resident Executive invited the military directors to prepare proposals for submission to a meeting of the National Executive which was called for the early part of March at the Dublin Typographical Society’s rooms at 35 Lower Gardiner Street. The evening before a small group of men met at the Keating Branch of the Gaelic League, 46 Parnell Square, to frame their recommendations … [And,] When the National Executive of the Volunteers met on the following night, our proposals were unanimously accepted. The General Headquarters Staff was constituted and suitably empowered and appointments made: Chief of Staff, Richard Mulcahy; Adjutant General [AG] and Director of Organisation, Michael Collins; Quartermaster General, Seán MacMahon; Director of Training, Dick McKee; and Director of Engineering, Rory O’Connor.37
Yet, there has been a general acceptance that it was Brugha who became CS.38 In particular, Béaslaí, in his 1926 biography of Collins, maintained that Mulcahy had been appointed Deputy Chief of Staff (DCS).39 Ernie O’Malley held the same opinion.40 Even Mulcahy himself ended up making the appointment a much more complex issue than it already was, when he later acknowledged that Collins, sometime during May, which was three months after the event, could have referred to him as DCS.41 Also, once again years later, he even said, rather confusingly, that his promotion was down to ‘Availability … [being] as important as suitability’42 and that it was an amicable settlement as to whether he himself or Collins would be nominated.43
But, at that time, unlike during November 1921, when three auxiliary Chiefs existed, there could have been only one DCS and Stack was the man who almost certainly occupied that position. The following are the reasons why. Firstly, Mulcahy himself said so: ‘as he [Stack] was there at the [national executive] meeting and had not been assigned any position on the staff I mentioned that I “would like to have Austin on the Staff”, and for want of some definite position for him I suggested that we might call him “Deputy Chief of Staff”’.44 Secondly, Stack was accorded that title in the GHQ correspondences of November 1919. Thirdly, his biographer placed him at GHQ meetings in that capacity for the eight to nine months previous to him resigning his position during the autumn of 1920 on the grounds of pressure of work in Home Affairs; and fourthly, his two-and-a-half-year stint as DCS gave him the excuse to return to GHQ in July 1921 with the same military rank as heretofore, but, in reality, as observer for de Valera and Brugha during their power struggles with Collins and Mulcahy (see Chapter 6).
Therefore, it is not an outlandish possibility that Mulcahy could have been appointed CS. However, if he was appointed, Brugha, despite his display of extraordinary physical bravery during the rebellion and despite his Trojan work in reforming the Volunteers during the previous two years, had been bypassed. More so, Brugha must have felt uncomfortable witnessing, as he considered it, the undesirable influence of the IRB manipulating national events yet again. On the other hand, Brugha was certainly not attracted by the prospect of a fulltime, albeit remunerated, position, preferring instead to continue to work and to draw a salary as salesman for ecclesiastical candle makers, Lawlor Ltd.45
Be that as it may, the rise to prominence of another problem, which had been pending for quite a while and which would demand a unique display of public unity in order for it to be solved, sent shock waves throughout society.46 On 10 April, Lloyd George introduced another Military Services Bill to the Commons.47 This Bill was broader in its reach than the original Military Services Act of 27 January 1916. As a consequence then, should the Bill be enacted and should it be applied to Ireland by the signing of an Order in Council, Irish men between the ages of eighteen and a half and fifty years of age, rather than between nineteen and forty-two, as heretofore, would become eligible for call-up.
In response, the following events, involving the leaders of church and politics, produced a virtuous circle of mass pacifistic protest: the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s public statement of opposition to the measure made through the medium of their standing committee, on 9 April,48 and, due to distrust in Lloyd George’s Home Rule/conscription quid pro quo, especially when it flew in the face of recent, unconditional, self-government negotiations, the IPP returned home from Westminster in protest to side with Sinn Féin on 18 April.49
But, in actual fact, the body, which might conceivably have had the biggest say ultimately in the outcome of those proceedings, was the first to respond. On 3 April, at a meeting which was held in Mulcahy’s house, the members of the Volunteer resident executive, of their own accord, formally decided to continue to implement their own version of passive resistance. This is to say that brinkmanship would be indulged in with the purpose of convincing Lloyd George that he would have a fight on his hands, should he decide to proceed further: ‘If arrested they had orders to be defiant of authority and … If, while in possession of arms their arrest was attempted, the arms should be used in an effort to prevent their loss.’50
As can be gathered, therefore, brinkmanship proved to be a difficult and potentially divisive strategy to operate. Robert Brennan’s take on it indicates as much: ‘The Volunteers in general were hoping that the British would go ahead with their conscription plans. They would have cheerfully faced a fight in which they would have the backing of the whole Irish people, but there was a great deal of misgiving when rumours began to fly that the Volunteers would strike first without giving the British time to complete their conscription plans.’51
The sort of happenings to which Brennan was referring had been evident for quite a while. For example, as early as 2 March, an instruction had to be promulgated prohibiting the raiding of private houses for arms.52 Even so, another very obvious and very rich source was found. On St Patrick’s Day, the first raid on an RIC barracks attempted by the post-Rebellion Volunteers occurred at Eyeries on the Beara Peninsula. And, on 13 April, at Gortatlea between Killarney and Tralee, the second was conducted, this time causing the death of two Volunteers.53
Then,
