The Irish Volunteer - Óglach na hÉireann Volume 2 - Number 27

Concern that the British Government may be about to impose Conscription is growing, especially after the formation of the Unionist-Liberal Coalition. Volunteers are urged to stop speculating about what great weapons they might obtain and to get what they can and be prepared to use them:

“The best available weapon may be the magazine rifle with bayonet, a rifle without a bayonet, a bayonet without a rifle, an automatic pistol, a common revolver, an old ’98 pike, and anything from that down to a pointed stick or a catapult, provided it can be handled so as to put the man on the other side out of action. While you are waiting for a present of a machine gun with ammunition for a whole campaign, get the thing you can get now, and exercise yourself with it till you feel sure that you can make the other man afraid of you.”

Eoin Mac Néill points out that Winston Churchill had said in a speech in Dundee the previous week that in fulfilment of the “express duty laid upon me by the Prime Minister” he had spent the last four years preparing for war with Germany. “Here again there is no hypocrisy, no pretence that the war was caused by the incidents of the war” comments Mac Néill.

See more