CHILDERS, Erskine. Military Rule in Ireland. Reprinted from ‘The Daily News’, with notes and an additional chapter.

Second edition, revised. Dublin: The Talbot Press, 1920. Octavo. pp. 48. Pictorial stapled wrappers. A good copy. Very rare.
Carty 1058

The first article in the pamphlet was published in the Daily News on 29 March 1920. This newspaper, owned by the Cadbury family, who were Quakers, and edited by A.G. Gardiner, had constantly supported the cause of Irish freedom. Childers wrote the articles in the context of more forceful attempts by the British administration in Ireland to enforce the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). His own house had been raided on 9 March 1920 and within a month some sixty Sinn Féiners were on hunger-strike in Mountjoy. Robert Brennan and Frank Gallagher of the Dail Eireann Propaganda Department, with whom Childers had co-operated since April 1919, provided important statistics for the articles by Childers. Military Rule in Ireland was first published on 19 July 1920 and within a month some 4,000 copies had been distributed, many going to America. A version in French, La Terreur Militaire en Irlande, was soon in print. The pamphlet remains a most valuable, if neglected, critique of English rule in Ireland at that time. The illustration on the upper cover is from a photo of a tank raid in Aungier Street, on February 20th, 1920.

[L4 10C]