Conscription:
From 'A History of Modern Ireland Giovanni Costigan, 1959

"In June of that year, the French premier, Clemenceau, asked Lloyd George why the Irish had not yet been conscripted. To the astonishment of the bystanders, the latter dryly murmured: "Mr. Prime Minister, you evidently do not know the Irish. "
In July, 1918, the government announced that, apart from privileged categories such as priests and members of religious orders, all able-
bodied men in Ireland between the ages of eighteen and fifty, and incertain occupations up to fifty-five, would be drafted forthwith. In
Ireland the news was greeted with a storm of indignation. Nothing had so united the country since the time of O'Connell—and then the
North had opposed Catholic emancipation, whereas now even the North joined with the rest of the nation to oppose conscription. The
Home Rulers joined with Sinn Fein, Dillon and Healy with De Valera and Griffith, in opposing the measure. In protest Dillon withdrew the
Nationalists from parliament, while De Valera called the act "a declaration of war upon the Irish nation. " Public bodies proclaimed
their intention to defy the law. The bishops took the lead in resistance to the government: not since Catholic emancipation had the hierarchy
put itself at the head of a truly popular cause. Wrote Dr. O'Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick:
"It is very probable that these poor Connacht lads know nothing of the meaning of the war. Their blood is not stirred by memories of Kossovo, and they have no burning desire to die for Servia. They would much prefer to be allowed to till their own potato gardens in peace in Connemara.... Their crime is that they are not ready to die for England? Why should they? What have they or their fathers ever got from England that they should ever have died for her?...
It is England's war, not Ireland's."
Faced by almost unanimous opposition both in the North and in the South, conscription could not possibly be enforced. The act therefore was a dead letter. Once again, in its ignorance of Irish psychology the British government had misread the situation and committed an
egregious blunder. The impatience now shown toward Ireland by Lloyd George, who was heard to wish that "damned country were
put at the bottom of the sea, " is understandable.
The beneficiary of the government's mistake was Sinn Fein, which received a further impetus when in the summer of 1918 the Prime
Minister declared that he had discovered a "German plot" in Ireland and promptly arrested seventy-three Sinn Fein leaders, including De
Valera. No proof of such a plot was ever forthcoming."

Whew - that was a close one!
Jim Carroll